The Wall Street Journal-20080131-Wagner Meets Maazel at the Met
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Wagner Meets Maazel at the Met
Full Text (1020 words)Die Walkure
Metropolitan Opera
Through Feb. 9
New York -- This month, Lorin Maazel, music director of the New York Philharmonic, ventured across the Lincoln Center Plaza to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time in 45 years to conduct several performances of "Die Walkure." Mr. Maazel's orchestral performances are often brightly polished, calculated interpretations, demonstrations of his impeccable technique and total control. That control was so evident in "Die Walkure" that at times the result sounded more like a dissection than a performance. Strings were tamped down and inner voices brought out -- in the "Ride of the Valkyries," for example, it was not the blaring brass theme that caught the ear, but the skirling woodwind figures above it. Wagner's leitmotifs were emphasized -- you couldn't miss the sword theme, or the Valhalla motif, no matter how buried in the orchestral texture.
This approach had its entertaining aspects, and it was very effective in such moments as Wotan's Act II monologue, in which the orchestra, not the voice, carries the musical interest. But "Die Walkure," a five-hour event, needs raw theatricality to sustain its length and energize its basically conversational dramatic structure. The Met's usual Wagner conductors often do that: James Levine builds pure theatrical excitement with volume and rhythmic flexibility; Valery Gergiev goes even further, whipping up a frenzy that can turn sloppy. Though Mr. Maazel never drowned out the singers, and the orchestra for the most part played very well for him, his cool, surgical approach and measured rhythms made the opera feel very long indeed.
The tired old (1986) Met production, designed by Gunther Schneider- Siemssen, with dim lighting by Gil Wechsler, didn't add much zip. Nor did Phebe Berkowitz's perfunctory directing. So it was up to the singers to carry the night.
James Morris, who has been singing Wotan in the house since 1989, still makes a powerful impression as the fallible, wounded king of the gods. Lisa Gasteen was also effective as his daughter Brunnhilde: Despite her announced sore throat, Ms. Gasteen's voice was bright and steely. As Siegmund, Clifton Forbis started out sounding dry but got better as his voice warmed up; Adrianne Pieczonka was pure-voiced Sieglinde, and the lack of plush in her sound gave her an unusually youthful vulnerability. Mikhail Petrenko could have been more menacing as Hunding. With effortless, controlled volume and projection, Stephanie Blythe was a commanding yet sympathetic Fricka. The eight Valkyries brought some welcome ensemble sound to the stage in Act III, though their chest-bumping and spear-waving looked comically like something out of "American Gladiators."
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Yet one could be grateful for the Met's "Walkure" (and recognize that some of its staging limitations stem from its status as a soon- to-be-replaced production) after seeing the top exemplar of opera in Perm, Russia. The Tchaikovsky State Opera and Ballet Theatre of Perm, which bills itself as "Russia's third most important opera and ballet company," paid a visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier this month, bringing its brand-new production of Tchaikovsky's "Mazeppa." Created by George Isaakyan, the company's artistic director, it could only be described as provincial.
"Mazeppa," a compelling work that deftly fuses political and personal issues, has been seen in New York twice in recent years: The Kirov Opera brought it over in 1998, and the Met mounted a different production, borrowed from St. Petersburg, in 2006. The opera, based on Pushkin's epic poem "Poltava," is about Mazeppa, a 17th-century Ukrainian figure -- a patriot or traitor, depending on your point of view -- who teamed up with the Swedes to try to take the Ukraine from Russia's Peter the Great. In the opera, the elderly Mazeppa falls in love with young Maria, much to the horror of her father, Kochubei, who is one of his wealthy Cossack allies. The ill-matched lovers go off together and Kochubei seeks revenge, but he is tortured and executed by Mazeppa. When Maria realizes her beloved's brutality, she goes mad.
Mr. Isaakyan made grand statements about how his production reflected the prevalence of brutality in the world, but the show, with sets and costumes by Stanislav Fyesko, just looked cheap. The three sides of the stage were hung with what looked like sheets, and enormous bent nails protruded from blocks of wood scattered around the playing area. During the overture and the prelude to Act III (an orchestral evocation of the Battle of Poltava, in which the czar routs Mazeppa), dim projections of crashing waves and lava flows appeared on the sheets. A large bird foot, its talons clutching an orb, hung from the flies throughout; during the battle music, it swung back and forth a few times and knocked over some of the nails. The costumes featured lots of greatcoats and shawls plus Cossack hats and bad wigs. The lighting, by Sergei Martynov, was amateurish.
Directing was largely nonexistent, with little interaction among the characters. The direction that did occur was often ill-advised -- Maria sang her final lullaby from a platform high in a rear corner of stage, from which she was almost inaudible.
As Mazeppa, baritone Victor Chenomortsev sounded energetic but worn; his love song to Maria in Act II, reminiscent of music from "Eugene Onegin," had no lyric qualities. Irina Krikunova's Maria was efficient but had little musical character. Aleksandr Pogudin looked much too young to be her father, and he sang without subtlety, his pitch wavering under pressure. The pitch of Pavel Bragin, who played Andrei, the young Cossack who loves Maria, wandered even more. As Maria's mother, Tatyana Poluektova sounded scoopy in Act I, but her Act II plea to her daughter to intercede with Mazeppa for Kochubei's life had welcome warmth and passion that was otherwise in short supply. The conducting, by Valery Platonov, the company's music director, was pedestrian, and there were some noticeable train wrecks. Even the chorus, so often the glory of Russian opera, was underpowered, except for the Act II finale, in which the people mourn the death of Kochubei.
Some things just shouldn't be taken on the road.
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Ms. Waleson writes about opera for the Journal.
