Humbled and Overwhelmed

La Traviata, photo @ Marty Sohl A champagne flute was thrown across the stage. The soprano twirled defiantly. She glowered and smirked at the audience. Then she launched into "Sempre libera" and capped the aria with an interpolated E-flat. Curtain comes down. Audience is mildly appreciative, except for one guy, who booed loudly from the E-flat to the part where audience members make that mad dash to the restroom. I was puzzled because there was nothing to boo about. In fact I couldn't imagine generating strong feelings either way about the Met's revival of La Traviata.  The evening was from curtain to curtain blandly efficient. No one was really terrible, but there just wasn't anything interesting happening.

Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczala, and Anita Rachvelishvili, photo @ Ken Howard In 1937 the legendary soprano Rosa Ponselle was losing her upper register. She had stage fright and also wanted to act in movies. She asked Met general manager Edward Johnson to mount a new production of Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur for her. Johnson refused. Ponselle never sang in staged opera again. She was barely 40. Tebaldi as Adriana with a young Domingo In 1963, beloved Met diva Renata Tebaldi was also dealing with a receding upper register, and demanded that Rudolf Bing stage Adriana Lecouvreur for her. Bing reluctantly agreed. Tebaldi sang six performances before vocal troubles overwhelmed her and she canceled the rest of the run. In Bing's memoir he recalled the incident with such bitterness you would have thought Tebaldi had personally murdered Bing's beloved dachshund with poisoned violets. Therefore the new production of Adriana Lecouvreur that was mounted for Met superdiva Ann

Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca, photo  @Ken Howard Angela Gheorghiu's Tosca shouldn't have worked for a million reasons. Her soft-grained lyric voice is now even more under-powered, and she admitted in an interview that she didn't like Luc Bondy's production. But her return to the Met for just two performances of Tosca last night was a triumph. Yes her voice occasionally didn't have the reserves of power to ride over the orchestra, yes her acting was sometimes a touch mannered, but Gheorghiu is like many great singers in that she draws attention to what she can still do, rather than things beyond her ability. Luc Bondy's production was a conscious reaction against the "traditional" Tosca productions. It was booed vociferously when it first opened in 2009. But over the years it's "evolved" in that different singers have changed the blocking, subtly or unsubtly, to suit their own tastes. Gheorghiu arrived onstage in Act One and it was

Omg omg omg. This will be brief since I have to write the Parterre Box review. But tonight I saw the unexpected (but totally FAB-ulous) role debut of Michael Fabiano as Rodolfo at the Met, as well as the return of grand diva Angela Gheorghiu. It really was one of those amazing nights and I did one of my rare stage door groupie trips. Amazing cast, amazing performance. Update: my review for  parterre box . What a diva, just ignore the tiny face next to her. Seriously, Angela is as larger-than-life offstage as she is onstage. She was traveling with an entourage of like 20 people and enough flowers to fill a wedding. Notice the fabulous matching gloves and the completely new stage makeup. Stage door people were calling him Mr. Fabulous. I think this name will stick. Personally, I warned him that I'm turning into a groupie. Be afraid. Be very afraid.  The very nice, handsome David Bizic, who is one of those people who is 1000x cuter offstage than onstage.

La Rondine January 26, 2013 Metropolitan Opera

Gheorghiu and Kaufmann, photo @Karsten Moran When I was living at home with my parents, my dad and I used to have a little thing. Whenever my mom went out of town, the first thing we did was we bought a big box of pizza. My mom, of course, would never allow us just to eat pizza and soda for dinner, so whenever she wasn't around, the first thing we did was pig out on pizza and soda. Adriana Lecouvreur is opera's equivalent of a big, greasy, pepperoni-filled pizza pie. It's cheesy (forgive the pun), but oh boy is it fun, so much more so than "eat your spinach" operas like, uh, Tannhauser . I've never really been able to follow the particulars of the plot except this: Adriana is an actress and that she's loved by a tenor and baritone, but there's a mezzo that gets jealous and poisons poor Adriana. Last night's performance of Adriana at the OONY reminded me of all the times I wolfed down pizza the minute my mom left the house. Ah, fun times

The final  La Traviata  in this video marathon is the 2007 video from La Scala, starring Angela Gheorghiu, Ramon Vargas, and Robert Frontali. Lorin Maazel conducts. Even though this is the most recent video in the timeline, in many ways it's the most old-fashioned. It's so old-fashioned that I wonder if even Maria Callas would have found it a bit stuffy. Even the bad old cuts are all taken -- Germont's cabaletta, the second verse of "O mio rimorso" as well as the still-standard second verses of "Ah forse lui," "Addio del passato," and "Parigi o cara." Gheorghiu gives her mature interpretation of Violetta, which no matter what you think of her, has to count as one of the most well-known interpretations of her era.