The Met: Looking Back in a Time of Pandemic

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It has been some months since Operapost published its last entry. We take up our blog again, glad to be joining the individuals and organizations that are bringing more and more music into our isolation. Their number and reach tell us how very crucial music is at this moment and how critical the diffusion of music of all genres has become.

Over the years, our posts have centered largely on the history of New York’s dominant opera company, the Metropolitan. The Covid-19 pandemic that has attacked New York so cruelly, draws us once again to the Met’s past, particularly as we contemplate its future. In this installment, we look to three critical periods of the company’s history: that of the 1918 Spanish flu, of the Great Depression, and of the 1969 stand-off between management and labor that shut the theater for months. How the company fared during and after these crises may help us to anticipate how the Met will survive the current humanitarian and economic catastrophe.

Although New York was hit less hard than nearby Boston and Philadelphia during the three waves of the Spanish flu it endured between September 1918 and February 1919, the city suffered a terrible blow.  Thirty thousand New Yorkers of a total population of 5,600,000 died. Theaters and other entertainments, including the Metropolitan Opera, remained open for the entire 1918-1919 season--albeit under stricter regulation and inspection by the Department of Health. And despite its full  performance schedule, in the ten years that separate 1911 from 1921, the 1918-1919 season saw the deepest dip in gross box-office receipts.

More telling than the comparison between the Spanish flu and Covid-19 on the operations of the company is the comparison of the effects of the strike of 1969 with the current closure. (See our three posts on labor-management conflict at the Met, Ars et Labor: 1. The Met, 1906-1966, Ars et Labor: 2. The Met, 1969, Ars et Labor: 3. The Met, 1980). Under General Manager Rudolf Bing, the Met shut its doors for three months, from September to December. When the company finally opened the delayed season, the average percentage of filled seats fell from 96% to 89%. A significant number of patrons failed to renew their subscriptions. Eleven years later, in 1980, when yet another contract dispute threatened the season, subscriptions still lagged behind the 1969 tally by 16%. We should note that as recently as the 2016-17 season the capacity at the Met was 67% and the strength of its financial profile is not nearly what it was in the late 1960s.

The current predictions of depression-level unemployment in the coming months suggest that even a fleeting  glance at the effects of the Great Depression on the Met may be instructive. The company stayed afloat, unlike the Chicago Civic Opera forced to go under by its balance sheet. The fragile equilibrium that obtained through 1929–30 was undone by the more than 10% decline in subscriptions in 1930–31 and another 10% the next year.  Principal singers, with very few exceptions, agreed to reductions in contracts and fees. Ticket prices were lowered; the lost revenue was offset by a major reorganization. As 1932–33 began to take shape, and more than one-tenth of the city’s population was on public or private assistance, the season was shortened from twenty-four to sixteen weeks, and subscription costs were halved and individual ticket prices reduced in order to generate more robust sales. But the drastically reduced prices did little to spur subscriptions. The company took to the radio in a “Save the Met” campaign. Within two months the $300,000 goal was achieved. An astonishing one-third of the total was contributed by radio listeners. (We will devote our next post to the story of the Saturday afternoon broadcasts.)

The Met was, in no small part, “saved” also by the box-office draw of a late-1930s contingent of superlative Wagnerians. (See our  three posts, Wagner's Last Golden Age at the Met: I, The Dramatic Soprano, Wagner's Last Golden Age at the Met: II, The Heroic Tenor, Wagner's Last Golden Age at the Met: III, Other Voices) on this remarkable moment of Met performance history.) The stars of this cohort were the Norwegian dramatic soprano Kirsten Flagstad and the Danish heldentenor Lauritz Melchior. The Flagstad-Melchior team guaranteed a full house in the seven seasons they sang together in New York—a stunning average of nearly thirty performances per season. We hear them at their peak in this 1939 studio recording of the duet that marks the triumphant finale of the prologue to Götterdämmerung. As the lovers declare their transcendent passion, Brünnhilde urges Siegfried on to new heights of heroism. Like the audiences of the Great Depression, we too are lifted out of our gloom by the boundless exuberance of these voices.

 

Don Pasquale: The Basso Buffo

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On March 12, 2016, the Metropolitan Opera will broadcast via radio its matinee of Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera, Don Pasquale. The eponymous role generally falls to a specialist in the comic characters of Mozart (Leporello in Don Giovanni, for example), or Rossini (Don Bartolo in Il Barbiere di Siviglia), or, of course, Donizetti himself (Dulcamara in L’Elisir d’amore). The success of the basso buffo hangs on the ability to regale the audience, to incite its laughter, more than it does on the quality of the voice. Above all, the bass must have the nimble diction that delivers rapid-fire patter, source of much of the fun. Often drawn from the company’s second rank, the basso buffo is nevertheless expected to carry significant musical and theatrical responsibility, yet he is rarely an opera’s focal point. Don Pasquale departs from this norm. In this ensemble work for a quartet of singers, the basso buffo is the central figure.

If we are to believe the reviewers, Salvatore Baccaloni was the first Met Pasquale, in the forty years since the opera’s company premiere, to grab and hold the spotlight. In the 1940 revival, and only then, did the basso buffo take full charge by upstaging his colleagues. The matinee broadcast, which we had access to in a recording, the one cheered by critics present in the opera house, does justice to Baccaloni’s outsized personality, reflected in his rich, shuddery voice; the delighted audience is frequently heard in appreciative response to his antics. Even the cool and acerbic Virgil Thomson agreed that the afternoon belonged to the bass, whom he compared to actors of genius Mary Garden, Fyodor Chaliapin, W. C. Fields, and Raimu! Baccaloni, who reigned as the Met’s principal basso buffo until the debut of Fernando Corena in 1954, continued to sing with the company until 1965.

Here is Baccaloni in a 1932 Italian recording of the Act III duet between Don Pasquale and Doctor Malatesta (the baritone is Emilio Ghirardini). Pasquale, a rich, stingy old bachelor, has been tricked into a mock marriage by his friend, Malatesta. Pasquale believes he has found proof that his much, much younger, spiteful, and spendthrift “wife,” Norina, is cheating on him, and with Malatesta, is elated at the prospect of catching her “in flagrante.” The second part of the duet requires the rapid-fire delivery to which we made allusion above.

In a 1979 video of this same duet, with subtitles in English, the great Welsh buffo Geraint Evans offers a Pasquale less broad than Baccaloni’s, but just as funny. He and Russell Smyth, the Malatesta, both anglophones, are adept at articulating the patter of the conclusion. 

The rendez-vous of Norina and her young lover, Ernesto, is a passage of sustained lyricism that we count among the most ravishing in all opera. First, Ernesto, Pasquale’s nephew who wants to marry Norina, sings a lilting serenade. Cesare Valletti, who took the role in the Met’s 1955 revival, was the company’s principal tenore di grazia through the 1950s. He tempers the over-the-top protestations of love declaimed for Pasquale’s benefit with his customary sincerity, sweet timbre, and command of subtle dynamics.

Following the serenade, without pause, Ernesto and Norina, their voices echoing and entwining, sing a love duet designed to enrage the presumably cuckolded Pasquale. “Tornami a dir” is a test for the singers as they match phrasing, stress, and tonal beauty at pianissimo level. In this 1930s recording, Tito Schipa and Toti Dal Monte ply their bel canto techniques to achieve a remarkable unison.

Like all operas designated “buffa,” Don Pasquale ends happily. The foolish faux husband, having seen the error of his ways, gives his blessing to the young couple.

Maria Stuarda, Donizetti's Scottish Queen

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On February 20, 2016, the Metropolitan will broadcast the matinee of Maria Stuarda across the country and beyond via radio. The Met premiere of this 1835 work by Gaetano Donizetti took place in 2012, almost one hundred and eighty years after it was composed. The star of that occasion was Joyce DiDonato who scored a stunning success for herself and for the company. The previous season, 2011-2012, it was Anna Netrebko who played Donizetti’s queen in Anna Bolena (1830), and who collected equally enthusiastic reviews.   This current season has seen the revivals of both Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena, and will see the Met premiere of Donizetti’s third “Tudor” opera, Roberto Devereux (1837), to be simulcast “Live in HD” on April 16, 2016. For the first time since Beverly Sills took on the challenge of all three Donizetti queens (Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII; Mary, Queen of Scots, the daughter of James V of Scotland; and Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry and Boleyn) at the at the New York City Opera in the 1970s, all three will be played by the same artist, Sondra Radvanovsky.   Only Maria Stuarda has been sung by both sopranos and mezzo-sopranos, in the case of the Met by mezzo DiDonato and this year by soprano Radvanovsky. A comparison of Beverly Sills in the nostalgic Act I aria and its agitated cabaletta, “O nube!...nella pace del mesto riposo,” with Janet Baker singing the same aria, gives a sense of the distance between this piece sung by a high soprano and by a mezzo. Baker takes the aria and cabaletta a half-step lower, and more obviously, Sills’ top notes are significantly higher and her embellishments far more intricate. That the Sills version is in the original Italian and the Baker in English only adds to the contrast. Were it Radvanovsky, a dark-voiced spinto soprano, in the place of Sills, the opposition would be less acute. We were in the house on February 1 for this season’s second performance of Maria Stuarda. As Maria, Radvanovsky met the formidable role with lustrous timbre, a dynamic range from silvery, floated pianissimo to rich, thunderous fortissimo, a thorough understanding of the bel canto style, and compelling acting. Sir David McVicar’s traditional staging was marred by his decision to endow Elizabeth with a pronounced limp and a masculine manner that flirted with caricature. The sumptuous costumes of John Macfarlane compensated somewhat for the drab sets. We signal two other productions of this work. We saw the first, a transmission of a 2008 La Scala performance in high definition, on a New York movie screen. The Maria Stuarda, Mariella Devia, an acknowledged exemplar of bel canto singing, and the Elisabetta, Maria Caterina Antonacci, a riveting singing actress, are equal to the high tension Donizetti supplied in this ahistorical meeting of the two queens. Here, in the final moments of Act I, Maria, no longer able to bear the humiliation meted out by Elisabetta, hurls the unforgivable insult that her cousin is the illegitimate daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII.  The other performance we recall here is one we attended at Berlin’s Staatsoper in October 2006. If we complain above about the current Metropolitan design and direction, about its bland and entirely forgettable sets and sometimes misguided staging, we hasten to note that what made the German production memorable is better forgotten. The overture was played not by the orchestra clearly visible in the pit but by an antiquated, scratchy disc that turned on a decrepit record player. Our fear was that the whole of the score would be heard thus. But, happily, no. The orchestra finally took over and the singers sang live. The production was based on the premise that the titanic late-16th-century battle royal between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots could be best understood by a contemporary audience as a version of the sibling rivalry between the aged sisters of the 1962 movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? The Bette Davis-like costume of the English queen, her smeared lipstick, her long braids, her sadism, and Mary’s Joan Crawford-like wig and outsized eyelashes, the wheelchair she leaves only for her bed or to crawl about on the floor are unmistakable signs of the production’s debt to Hollywood iconography. As you will see in this clip from the Berlin production, the Protestant Elizabeth has the last absurd gesture: she slits the Catholic Mary’s throat with a crucifix. The excellent soprano is Elena Mosuc.

Turandot Is 90: 1926-2016

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Giacomo Puccini’s posthumous Turandot (unfinished at the composer’s death in November 1924, with the final scene completed by Franco Alfano) was an event of national moment at its La Scala world premiere in April 1926. Prior to reaching the Met just seven months later, in November of that same year, it had been the subject of lively interest in the New York press. The then general manager, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, filled the stage with stars, comprimarios, choristers, dancers, and supers reported to number between six hundred and seven hundred. Joseph Urban’s spectacular orientalist design, a pinnacle of decor, was just one of his fifty or so Met commissions, an oeuvre still unequaled.

Fifteen opening night curtain calls spoke eloquently of audience approbation. But most critics disagreed, some vehemently. The New York Times reviewer, Olin Downes, for one, embarked on the mission of striking the opera from the boards. He fulminated at every revival: “a whole resplendent operatic edifice, destined sooner or later to collapse like a house of cards, has been made of virtually nothing;” “Puccini had stopped creating when he wrote it, but had mastered the art of saying nothing exceedingly well; and in a final insult,” “there is only one work by a great composer of modern times that we think as bad, and that is the Egyptian Helen by Richard Strauss.” Downes and his colleagues notwithstanding, Turandot led the box office in 1926–27 and rang up receipts far above average the following season.

Following a run of twenty-seven performances between 1926 and 1930, Turandot was dropped, no doubt the victim of high production costs, hefty royalties, and the departure of the star soprano, Maria Jeritza, who had made the Chinese princess one of her signature roles. Here she is as Turandot, with Gatti-Casazza.

On the heels of the La Scala and Met premieres, Turandot made the rounds of the world’s great opera houses, and the tenor’s third act aria, “Nessun dorma (No one shall sleep)” quickly became an audience favorite. Calaf, the “Unknown Prince,” has bested Turandot in their riddle contest, but will renounce his prize, the princess herself, if she succeeds in discovering his name. At the climax of the aria, certain that he will prevail in their battle of wills, he exclaims “Vincerò.” Among the first to record “Nessun dorma” was Spanish tenor Antonio Cortis, moving in the dreamy opening section and thrilling in the concluding heroic outburst.

Turandot finally returned to the Met stage in 1961. The clarion voices of Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli would secure the opera’s place in the company’s canon for good. Here Corelli sings the Act I aria, “Non piangere Liù (Do not weep, Liù)” in a 1958 Italian television production. Calaf comforts the slave girl, Liù, who has accompanied his father into exile. Known for his stentorian top notes, Corelli exhibits the plangent tone and firm legato demanded by the piece.

The direction of the 1961 Turandot fell to Nathaniel Merrill. But the plaudits went to the delicate chinoiserie of Cecil Beaton’s long-ago Peking, with décor less grandiose than Puccini’s immense canvas had known in New York and elsewhere in the 1920s and 1930s.

Met audiences will see again this season (the “Live in HD” simulcast is scheduled for January 30, 2016) the Franco Zeffirelli mise-en-scène which is by now three decades old. No surprise here. A year after assuming the mantle of general manager, Peter Gelb told an interviewer: “I promised the Met subscribers when I first came on board—well, I didn’t promise anything, but I did say that there were two iconic Zeffirelli productions, Bohème and Turandot, and that the other Zeffirelli productions are going to be replaced.” Gelb has held fast to his word. The lavish La Bohème and the massive Turandot live on.

It was back in 1987, and thanks to the philanthropy of Sybil Harrington, and to the particular fancy she took to Zeffirelli’s menageries, that general manager Joseph Volpe’s Met could take on the expense of the gigantic production. Harrington’s clout provided another opening for lamentations on the state of opera in New York. One critic groused that Zeffirelli’s La Bohème, Tosca, and Turandot, all underwritten by Harrington, had “turned the Metropolitan from house of art into tourist attraction, a nice conclusion, perhaps, to a bus tour including lunch at Mama Leone’s.” He may have been thinking of that moment during the Act 2 riddle scene when audiences gasped in amazement, and most reviewers in dismay, as the princess’s imperial backpack gushed multicolored streamers. Even without the soon-abolished streamers, Zeffirelli’s overstuffed palace stands in vivid contrast to Beaton’s elegant staircase, seen above.

Turandot enters to sing one of the most taxing arias in the soprano repertoire. “In questa reggia (In this palace)” is a narrative about her ancestor, Princess Luo-ling, who was captured and murdered by the enemy. Turandot swears vengeance on any man who sues for her hand. She will put to him three riddles; if he fails to solve them he forfeits his life. Joan Sutherland, who performed heavier roles before becoming a bel canto coloratura soprano, is Turandot in this studio recording. She never sang the part onstage. Sutherland recounts the story compellingly and surmounts the exacting, high-lying phrases with ease and power.

Pucccini’s music ends just after the death of Liù, the slave girl who takes her own life rather than reveal the name of the Unknown Prince. In a lyric outpouring, she predicts that the ice princess, too, will fall in love with Calaf. Mafalda Favero, who appeared only twice at the Met in the late 1930s, expresses the grief and resolve which Puccini invested in the last aria he was able to pen.