The Met in the Time of Pandemic: The unfinished Season, May 2020, Maria Stuarda, Kát’a Kabanová

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COVID-19 continued to rampage through New York in May 2020. On May 1, the closure of public schools was extended to the end of the academic year; two weeks later, the Governor ordered the continuation of the state of emergency, the lock-down of all but essential services, and strict limitations on gatherings until the middle of June. By the end of the month, the virus had claimed 100,000 lives in the U.S. alone.

 

The Met orchestra and chorus, along with its stagehands, had gone without pay since the end of March. On May 5, the General Manager announced the furlough of forty-one members of the administrative staff, a measure the company had earlier thought it could avoid. And some full-time employees were reduced to part-time status. There were shards of good news in the midst of so much uncertainty and foreboding. On May 7, the Met announced that 15,000 new subscribers had signed on to its on-demand video service; emergency fund-raising was going well, thanks in part to 10,000 new donors. Nonetheless, the losses were staggering.

 

In May, too, the Met mourned the passing of two stars of a previous generation, Rosalind Elias and Gabriel Bacquier. We will have profiles of these artists and clips of their performances in most favored roles in our next post.

And May saw also the last gasp of the unfinished 2019-2020 season with the cancellation of Gaetano Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, scheduled to run through May 9, and Leoš Janáček’s Kát’a Kabanová, scheduled to open on May 6. The two works shared this thwarted aspiration: to secure a predictable spot in the company’s repertoire.

Maria Stuarda

In its 2012 Met premiere and its 2016 revival, Maria Stuarda had shown itself to be a congenial vehicle first for Joyce DiDonato and then for Sandra Radvanovsky who took on Donizetti’s two other Tudor queens, Elisabeth in Roberto Devereux and Anne in Anna Bolena the same season. (See our post of Feb. 4, 2016, https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7211323416075256950/77602516158896126) Diana Damrau was to be Maria Stuarda in 2020.

 

In this ensemble scene from a 1982 English-language performance at London’s English National Opera, Mary is sung by Janet Baker, Elizabeth by Rosalind Plowright, The Queen of Scots, prisoner of the Queen of England, is outraged at her cousin’s imperious contempt. In the presence of a chorus )of horrified principals and anguished courtiers, Mary hurls insults at Elizabeth—and seals her fate. (Our post of Feb. 4, 2016 includes a clip of Janet Baker in another excerpt from Maria Stuarda.)

 

In Act III, Donizetti’s tragic queen faces execution on the block. The Maria here is Mariella Devia in a 2008 La Scala performance. Her intermittent Met career spanned fifteen seasons. In the clip that follows, at the age of sixty, her technique astonishing, her voice warm and still fresh, Devia demonstrates her peerless command of bel canto style. (Our post of Feb. 4, 2016 includes a clip of Mariella Devia in another excerpt from Maria Stuarda.)

Kát’a Kabanová

Susanna Phillips, slated for the 2020 revival, would have been the Met’s fourth Kát’a Kabanová. With its first Met staging in 1991, the opera introduced Czech to the company’s roster of languages. The beleaguered heroine, tormented by her provincial existence and by guilt over her adulterous desire, was Gabriela Beňačková, whose success in Janáček’s works eased their way into the world’s theatres. The composer’s late masterpiece is difficult to excerpt. See below the link to a 1979 New York concert performance that, despite inferior sonics, captures Beňačková’s soaring soprano and deeply-felt attachment to the title role. 

Kát’a Kabanová concert performance 1979

We will have to await future reprises of Maria Stuarda and Kát’a Kabanová to know whether either title has succeeded in drawing a wider public to its cause.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Puritani I: Sopranos

Three titles by Vincenzo Bellini have been presented during the Met’s 2013-14 season. This feast for Belliniphiles is unprecedented in the company’s history. Each of the operas has featured at least one excellent individual performance, sometimes more. In the first cast of Norma, only Sandra Radvanovsky’s Druid priestess met the measure; in the second cast, Angela Meade found a worthy partner in Jamie Barton for the crucial Norma-Adalgisa duets. I reported on the very satisfying La Sonnambula in my April 6 post. I Puritani will be broadcast this coming Saturday, May 3.

When the 1976 Puritani production was new, Ming Cho Lee’s sets were meant to look like 19th-century pastel illustrations; Sandro Sequi’s direction recalled with affection the attitudes of 19th-century divas and divos. The subtle lighting and the texture of the show have degraded over time. At the premiere of the April 17 revival, the staging of the ensemble consisted of choristers moseying on and off the stage; some principals reacted to the drama with intent, others with standard gesticulation. The Elvira, Olga Peteyatko, a highly touted Russian coloratura, made her Met debut. She sang with clean fioriture (minus a fully developed trill), attention to the text and the theatrical moment. Yet for me, the full frisson was missing. Peteyatko’s agreeable tone lacked individuality; her acting was no more than acceptable. In the inevitable comparison with her most recent predecessor, Anna Netrebko is off the mark in dexterity, lacking even a rudimentary trill, but she sings much of the role beautifully and creates a riveting character. Peteyatko’s Arturo, Lawrence Brownlee, met his role’s daunting demands with courage and accuracy but without his customary ease. His beautiful tenore di grazia, so effective in Rossini, was sometimes stressed by Belllini’s more strenuous Arturo.

The Met’s first Puritani was presented during the company’s inaugural season, 1883-84, but only once. The most influential reviewers, confirmed Wagnerites, were dismissive of the bel canto repertory although fulsome in praise for the Elvira, Marcella Sembrich. I did not include an example of her singing in my post on Sonnambula. Her recording of Elvira’s “Qui la voce” and its cabaletta “Vien diletto” gives more pleasure and a better sense of her voice and her formidable technique.

 


The return of Puritani to the repertoire in 1918 marked a turn in the fortunes of bel canto: the critical establishment that had excoriated Bellini had begun to acknowledge his genius. The superb Met cast apparently did full justice to the score. To judge by this recording of Maria Barrientos, the Elvira, it must have been quite a night. Note: I suggest that you lower the volume for this excerpt.

 

Maria Callas was responsible for the resurrection of many bel canto operas in the mid-20th century. I Puritani had special significance for her. At the beginning of her career in Italy, she was known as a dramatic soprano. In January 1949, she was engaged in Venice for Brünnhilde. The conductor of the Wagner, Tullio Serafin, knew Callas’s voice and asked her to step in for an indisposed colleague just five days before the first night of Puritani. She had never sung the role of Elvira. She learned it on the spot—and the Valkyrie had found her true calling in the bel canto world. For the full impact of her dark, tragic Elvira, listen to this live excerpt from the May 29, 1952 performance in Mexico City, site of early international triumphs for Callas. She emerges clearly from the aural mess and prevails against a conductor who merely beats time and a chorus that seems to be sight-reading. This is the finale to Act I, the first of Elvira’s three mad scenes.

 

To Joan Sutherland goes a large measure of the credit for the renewal of interest in I Puritani at the Met. The 1976 production mounted for her has been followed by five revivals. Here she is in 1962, in Elvira’s entrance aria.



My next post will treat Puritani tenors and basses.