Note to those who receive new posts via e-mail: You must
click on the title of the new post, highlighted above in blue, in order to
access images and sound.
The Metropolitan’s
2014-15 season is behind us; it closed on May 9 with Un Ballo in maschera. We
look forward to opening night 2015-16, September 21, and a new production of
Verdi’s Otello. During the long
hiatus, we will cast a look at past Met seasons, beginning with the very first,
1883-84, and in this post, at the inaugural opening night, October 22,
1883. The opera was Charles Gounod’s Faust.
The confusion outside the new opera house, and the commotion
within, delayed the prelude for many minutes. BAs one wag put it, no one
seemed to mind except “a few ultra musical people in the gallery.” On the
sidewalk out front, scalpers hawked parquet seats at $12 and $15 each and
places in the balcony at $8. Overeager takers failed to notice that as
late as 7:30, $5 balcony tickets were still on sale at the box office. Ushers
in evening dress escorted patrons to their seats. The three tiers of boxes
and the parquet were filled, the balcony nearly sold out. Only the
$3-a-pop uppermost section, the “family circle,” so renamed to repel roués
accustomed to claiming it as their reserve, showed empty seats. When the
prelude was over and the curtain rose on the old philosopher’s study, the
audience finally fell silent.
Before the show was
over, the most affluent, the least, and all those in between had cause to
grumble. The carriage trade had had to cope with long lines at the three
entrances, north on 40th Street, east on Broadway, south on 39th. Many
of their seats, despite prime locations, had poor sight lines and equally
dismal acoustics. Nonetheless, seventy boxes offered what a set of
prominent New Yorkers had bought for themselves: a house that would accommodate
the spectacle of their power and riches. The press paid particular
attention to the movements of William Henry Vanderbilt whose two boxes
held his family and numerous distinguished guests. In the course of the
evening, Vanderbilt sat by turn in each of his boxes and was seen stopping
in at those of friends and relations. His valet was posted at the door to
pass on the calling cards of visitors--unfailingly male, women rarely left
their seats--who sought an audience with the Commodore’s son. The
cumulative wealth of the several Vanderbilts and of the others of their crowd
was estimated at upwards of $500 million.
The new house
was leased to theatrical manager Henry E. Abbey who had been charged by
the board to assemble a company for the inaugural season. The “Italian”
of his “Grand Italian Opera” meant that French and German works on the bill
would be sung in Italian. That was how it was. Years later, in
evoking an 1870s Faust with Christine
Nilsson at the Academy of Music, Edith Wharton took a jab at this
practice: “An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required
that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be
translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking
audiences.”
When Abbey chose Faust for the Met’s opening night, he had the taste
of his conservative patrons in mind. At its first performance in New York in
1863, Gounod’s opera leapt to the top of the operatic charts, and there it
stayed for many decades. By 1890 it had been on the boards so often that one
critic famously dubbed the Metropolitan the “Faustspielhaus.” As late as 1935,
it had been given at the Met more than any other work; in 1950 it had fallen
only slightly behind Aïda in
popularity; today it ranks eighth in frequency of performance by the company.
And no wonder. Its graceful melodies serve a skillfully wrought libretto and
show to great advantage the wares of star singers.
The brief role of Valentin encompasses
one of the opera’s familiar tunes, the aria “Avant de quitter ces lieux,” in
which Marguerite’s brother, on his way to battle, entrusts the innocent girl to
divine protection. The singer must engage a broad-ranging legato as well as
martial heft. Verdi baritone Leonard Warren, who sang Valentin early in his
career, delivers a nuanced, cleanly articulated line, along with his always
resplendent upper register, in this 1945 studio recording.
But God is deaf to Valentin’s
prayer. Marguerite surrenders to the handsome young Faust. The soprano’s role
demands a modicum of coloratura facility, sweet tone, refined phrasing, and
late in the opera, the strength for extended outbursts of emotion. Victoria de
los Angeles, the most prominent Marguerite of the 1950s, made her Met debut in
the role. Her two commercial recordings of Faust
set a standard that subsequent divas have been hard pressed to meet, let
alone surpass. She makes palpable the naïve young woman’s thrill at finding a
casket of jewels in her garden, joyously likening herself to a king’s daughter.
Marguerite is the prize that
seals the pact between the Devil and the world-weary Faust. The part of Méphistophélès
appeals to the histrionic bent of leading basses, many of whom overplay the
diabolical to the detriment of the composer’s elegant line. Cesare Siepi, who
sang the role often throughout his Met career, treats the mock serenade to
Marguerite with ravishing tone, scrupulous musicianship, all the while
relishing the piece’s sardonic charge. The few tenor lines are sung by Eugene Conley
In the 1950s and beyond, the
Met’s resident Faust was the excellent Nicolai Gedda. We have chosen another
tenor for Faust’s ecstatic “Salut, demeure chaste et pure.” Alain Vanzo never appeared
with the company, but did perform the role on the Lincoln Center stage during
the 1977 visit of the Paris Opéra. Vanzo was the quintessential French tenor of
the post-war period. We hear his honeyed timbre, pristine diction, and
long-breathed legato capped by the astoundingly clean attack on the high C at
the end, held, then tapered to ethereal softness.