Florez Recital a Free-wheeling Lovefest, Chorus Line Compelling But Dated

A tenor and his guitar

I have seen Juan Diego Flórez in a variety of operatic roles for over 16 years and I've always associated this tenor as being supernaturally disciplined. If he needed to hit a high C, he hit it (or, in the case of Tonio, he hit 18 of them in "Ah mes amis + encore). He insisted on looking good -- in Le Comte Ory he famously refused to wear the nun's habit into the "bed trio."  He was remarkably consistent -- you always knew what you were going to get.

So I thought a Flórez recital would be very much the same. Disciplined. Consistent. A bit stiff. Well I was wrong. Yesterday's recital in Carnegie Hall was one of those freewheeling occasions where anything goes and anything went. It was as if he had temporarily switched personalities with Vittorio Grigolo.

The tenore di grazia sang an eclectic selections of arias. Some were in his repertoire (he started off with two Rossini songs, and staples like "Una furtiva lagrima" were there, as was "Fra poco a me ricovero") but much of it was not. He sang the two big arias from Massenet's Manon. "Salut" from Gounod's Faust. He ended the second half of the concert with "Che gelida manina" while telling a story of how he'd recently needed a big cast for his hand so he definitely did not have a "little hand." He sang "Pourquoi me réveiller" while going on a tangent about something that I didn't understand (thanks to the comment who clarified his comments). He sang Massenet's "Ouvre tes yeux bleus" which ironically is most famous as the "bedroom" pas de deux music for Kenneth MacMillan's Manon.

Juan Diego and Scalera

Throughout the concert random people from the audience shouted at him and he often yelled back. A lot of it was in Spanish. I couldn't hear what they were saying but it was obviously part of his concert experience. His accompanist Vincenzo Scalera tactfully stayed in the background and followed Florez's often idiosyncratic tempi. In "Una furtiva lagrima" every syllable was drawn out to such an extent that in a lesser tenor it would have seemed mannered.  Scalera also got to do two solo numbers -- a piano waltz by Donizetti and the Meditation from Thais. Yeah that's right. Just go with it.

Where it got really wild was the encores. First Juan Diego came out with his guitar and the audience was screaming at the sight of his beloved six-stringer. He sang three guitar numbers -- the well-worn "Besame mucho" (conveniently the title of his new CD), as well as two other Peruvian love songs. "Cucurrucucu Paloma" was one of those earworms that the audience went nuts over. It was tender, it was sweet, it made you fall in love with the idea of falling in love.

Then Scalera came out again, some people in the audience yelled "Ah mes amis," and Flórez obliged, but not before pumping the audience for more applause. Before the final high C he banged on the piano to work the audience into even more of a frenzy. I thought he'd be done after those nine high C's, but nope, he sang three more encores. In total he sang 7 encores, which lasted longer than the second half of the concert. In "Granada" he threw a rose at the audience while caressing another rose he'd received. In one case he gestured so much with a rose in his hand that the rose flew off the stem. He responded by throwing the rose into the audience again. He ended with "Nessun dorma" in which he asked the audience to hum the chorus.

The audience screamed throughout. More shouting. Peruvian flag waving.  Ordinarily this kind of carrying on in a recital I think is tasteless, but hey, if you've got it, flaunt it. And the audience ate it up. It was the kind of audience/singer love-fest that people always talk about but rarely experience.

Flórez has been absent from New York for several years (the last thing he did was La Donna del Lago in 2015). In the meantime he has expanded his repertoire -- he's sung Romeo, Werther, and is set to sing Alfredo in the Met's upcoming new production of La Traviata. His voice however is pretty much the voice we heard all those years ago, when he was only in his 20's and causing a sensation. Light, breezy, a bit nasal, with a inhumanly solid upper register. There is more weight and warmth to the middle of his voice now, but basically the recital was a remarkable display of vocal preservation. After all, he made his professional debut in 1994 and never looked back. Almost 25 years in major international houses and he not only still sings well but performs with joy. Welcome back Juan Diego!

a

After a quick dinner I headed over to City Center for A Chorus Line. I've never seen this Broadway mega-hit before except for a grainy black and white video of the OBC. Again, for much of the audience this was obviously a trip down memory lane. They screamed when the lights came on and they saw the iconic white strip down center stage -- the "chorus line," so to speak. This musical about some theater gypsies desperate to join the dancing ensemble of an unnamed Broadway musical has become legendary as much for the backstory as for the musical itself.

People who are at most casually acquainted with musical theater history know that A Chorus Line is based on the real-life stories of many theater gypsies. That the iconic choreography was the creation of Michael Bennett, an exacting taskmaster very much like the "Zach" of the musical. That the original "Cassie" (Donna McKechnie) was romantically involved with Bennett the way Cassie and Zach were once romantically involved. That a musical with almost no scenery and a cast in nothing but regular dance-wear became a smash hit and went on to run for over 6,000 performances. And the sad epilogue: director Michael Bennett, book-writers James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante and lyricist Edward Kleiban all died of AIDS.

I kind of wondered whether the ecstatic audience reaction to last night's performance was as much a result of nostalgia as actual quality, because the performance ... wasn't that good. First of all, Marvin Hamlisch's score has some great numbers ("One," "The Music in the Mirror," "I Hope I Get It") but much of it sounds like a bad parody of 1970's disco. It's in my opinion not a first-rate musical theater score. It's not on the level of John Kander and Stephen Sondheim (to name two of his contemporaries) and you guys will kill me but it doesn't even have the easy-listening quality of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

"I Hope I Get It," photo @ Sara Krulwich

I actually am surprised that the book won a Pulitzer because the stories of the individual dancers today seems trite and predictable. They all follow Moss Hart's observation that "the theater is the inevitable refuge of the unhappy child." What might have seemed shocking in the 1970's (frank talk about sexuality, broken homes, hints at child abuse) is no longer shocking. The Zach/Cassie storyline today is tiresome. The musical is really held together by the choreography of Bennett. When all else fails, the dancing keeps the show alive. I especially love his use of mirrors during dancing numbers. That mirror image effect you see behind the dancers is awesome.

Hurder in "The Music in the Mirror", photo @ Joan Marcus

Maybe what the revival lacked was strong enough actors to pull off the stories. There are some good performances (Leigh Zimmerman is heartbreaking as Sheila, a dancer of a certain age, Robyn Hurder really stopped the show in "The Music in the Mirror", Kate Bailey was charming as Kristine, the tone-deaf dancer) but many performances came across as studied and mannered. I think in order for A Chorus Line to work you have to sense the raw hunger and desperation of the dancers. It's therefore annoying to hear Eddie Gutierrez (Paul) trying and failing to sound genuinely emotional in his big soul-baring monologue, or Tara Kostameyer (Diana) singing "What I Did For Love" without conveying any of the love that she has for performing. Tony Yazbeck (Zach) was a disappointment. He's a good dancer but he seemed so bored and disengaged as Zach. The booming voice that talks to the dancers should not sound as checked out and flat as Yazbeck.

During the finale "One" the audience was so loud that I could barely hear the music. But I couldn't help but feel that this was a lost opportunity. I think the point of the number "One" is that we finally see the payout from these individuals that we've grown to care about. But when you never really cared about them, then it just becomes another chorus kickline.