On Monday night, J and I made our annual outing to the Met's season opener. This is our 4th so far: we saw Renee's big opening, the booed Tosca, and the intermission-less Rheingold. This year, they had a new way of issuing tickets; before you could buy best available seats the moment after you subscribed, and I always went psycho subscribing the very first second subscriptions could be renewed and then got great opening night tickets. This time, they allegedly waited and issued the tickets based on subscription priority or something like that. The end result? The same - Row A of Balcony, off to the side. $140 a ticket seems reasonable for a gala, and J gets to use the tax deductible part.
Armed with black suits and cute skinny ties, we stood around and watched famous people for a while before going in. Nobody super exciting, was nice to see LeeLee Solbiesky not pregnant-and-about-to-pop like last time we saw her. The best part was when super cute Mariusz Kwiecien came to the area where only recognized VIP's may enter, and the girl holding pages and pages of photos of famous people tried keep him out. She had no idea who he was. Their star baritone plastered on ads everywhere for Donny G, and she had no idea who he was. He looked amused, and had to spell out his name to her.
Everyone was excited for Trebs as Bolena. Maybe too excited. The bouncy Italian conductor popped out of nowhere and did the national anthem, all the crowd pretended like they could sing when they really couldn't, and then the conductor walked off. Then, gone. Was he doing a stupid HD interview? 'Cause we were all waiting forever in the dark. And then the longest overture ever. I hate overtures. Except the cutesy ones that play all the hits we are going to hear. But this? Long. Long. Long. I like the opera, not the symphony, sorry. Bring out the singers.
When the curtain finally did come up, it was a dark dark room. Kind of boring. I mean, I know it was night-time, but it was just too dark. And everyone in dark drab colors. And stars looking really obvious when the only light in the house was the mega-spot shining on them.
It took a while, but eventually Trebs came on, there was clapping, she sang some sad stuff, whatever. Beautiful voice, unfamiliar music, not terribly exciting. Garanca would have been fun to see, I think, but Ekaterina Gubanova seemed fine to me. Rough edgy voice, exciting if frayed top, some good chesty lows. A very mezzo high voice, unlike Garanca who to me sounds very soprano on high notes. Great chemistry and acting with Ildar Abdrazakov, who I did not like at all. He was just not loud. Could not hear him in ensembles, over orchestra, and when singing alone just never had enough authority or volume in his voice. Smeton's song had some very yummy contralto lows.
Stephen Costello was great in Act I. His voice was exciting, high, pretty loud, and he looked good. He and Trebs had a great scene near the end of Act I. Here was the first part where I felt Trebs was really living up to expectation. She was intense, and chesty. She flung out some fearsome high notes that were very loud. Lots of smiling from me here. One note right before she told Percy she'd never see him again was of particular mention, and the whole audience was jolted by the urgency and loudness of the outburst.
The the big Act I finale started out great, the cabaletta part was crazy fast. Trebs's voice was flying all over the place and sounding great. The two crazy high notes were great. And then came time for the high D and...... a small bird being squeezed to death tweeted from her throat. It was a D, bang on, for sure. It was singing, sort-of. But from another register in another singer in another opera. And she was trying her all to make it work, and held it the full length, and pushed more air and made it a bit louder, but it never worked. It was really strange. What should have been the moment where she dominated as she usually does best, it just came off a bit wimpy. I heard people complaining as J and I went in search of a shorter bar line at intermission.
Act II was long. WTF? Every other Donizetti opera is like 70 minutes, 30 minute intermission, 50 minutes, done. Not Anna Bolena. 90 minutes and then 90 minutes is too much bel canto. So many scenes. Not enough cabalettas - were they cut or something? All that slow music just made 90 minutes feel longer.
Each scene was better than the last. The confrontation was great. Trebs was doing some great fake crying at the beginning. She is excellent when she's being sad, crazy, or an angry raging bitch. The rest of the time, meh. This duet was all angry raging bitch. She looked furious. Jane looked seriously afraid of being smacked. It was great. Audience loved it - first clapping of the night that felt more than polite post-final-chord claps.
Jane was fantastic begging for Anna to be spared. Henry would have been great if another singer was hiding behind him and singing for him. Alternating between desperate, sad, and raging bitch, Trebs was in top form in her confrontation with Henry, great stuff. Smeton came out tied to a 2-by-4 and looked really miserable. Then Percy had a really long scene with his killer aria. And for all of his great singing all night, which I thought was virile and loud, he just ran out of, well, everything. He almost strangled himself on the high bits. It was brutal. He was trying so so hard, but it was not coming out properly. Poor guy.
Then, as if we hadn't endured enough and weren't totally starved waiting for dinner, a long long women's chorus sang forever about something. Finally, we got to Trebs losing her mind, and it was fantastic. Everything as it should be. Beautiful singing, crazy outbursts, great acting. Loved how through the rest of the opera her hair was under hats and such, because here was the beautiful Trebs we're used to seeing looking great with long hair. Some scarily off-pitch high notes, but oh so pretty. And crazy clapping after. And then she even smiled, she didn't even try not to as she usually does, she knew she made it.
Then to outbitchify her prior angry bitch moments, when the bells started ringing and the pre-amble to the final cabaletta started, she made a fearsome face clearly seen by all the house. It was her "I'll cut a bitch" face, I'm telling you. The cabaletta was faster than I've heard it in recordings, and it was fierce. She chested the hell out of every low note she could push into. Her high notes, which sounded on youtube from Vienna to be often sharp, seemed perfectly placed. And loud. Very loud. Then she flung her hair in a bun, and with more conviction than any opera acting (except maybe Guleghina killing herself in Queen of Spades) she walked to the guards and off to her execution screaming out a spectacularly loud final note. Even after she passed through the door and was facing away from us behind a giant wall with only a small door opening, the sound was booming. Crowd became hysterical. Even all the non-opera rich people, who never really know what's going on, what's good, or why they're clapping, seemed to be frenzied by the cabaletta. It was some rocking good stuff. The giant shiny red curtain thing that fell was great too - very effective and not cheesy, as claimed by some of the stuff I've read.
So why wasn't the show overall the 5-star show we all wanted it to be? Well, I think Trebs's placement on the stage was based on seeing her in my favorite Trebs moment, the poison aria in Romeo & Juliette. She acts, she sings loud, and she sounds great facing away from us. She spent so much of the performance not singing like the others, eg,. facing the audience no matter who they're singing to, but singing in whatever direction she happens to be facing. She sings into Henry's chest, to the top of Percy's head, to the back of the stage, to the floor, the ceiling, everywhere except to us. And sure, when she's singing loud you could hear her if a 747 was crashing into the orchestra between you and her. But when she's singing regularly, her sound isn't as good as it would be delivered actually to the audience. Maybe it's to look good for the HD, but she should sing more to us and less to imaginary cameras please.
Also, thanks to my favorite place where they post recordings from the live broadcasts, I got to listen to a recording of Monday. And, funny thing, although Trebs's middle and high notes generally sound pretty much as they do live, her chest sounds even more deliciously chestier (it was pretty chestily impressive, but recorded it sounds contraltoish), and the D at the end of Act I sounds completely not the same. It's still not good. But it is more than audible ands sounds like a deperate scream, which at least suits the scene. Don't be fooled, it was an awful whir. Also, on recording, you can hear Henry and he sounds great.
It really makes you appreciate the superhuman volume of the big stars, because less-than-great people seem to record pretty well at the Met, but up in the Balcony, only the true good voices carry well. And not necessarily just the loud ones. And in his 15 seconds of singing, Bolena's brother (he's a bass, right?) made me wonder why he wasn't singing Henry because: a) his sound was huge, and b) he sounded really great and menacing. All in all, a fun night.
Fury and damnation to Ed's Chowder House, by the way. I made reservations for 9:45. Upon learning that this opera is way longer than it should be, I went in person and told them I needed to make the reservation later. The girl said: "sure, just come after the opera." So at 10:25, after throwing ourselves in front of aging seniors, flying out the secret emergency exit, being trapped by the stupid tent and having some jerk security guard argue with us and try and make us go back in and leave through another exit, we got to dinner. And when we got to the check-in, a bitchy waiter looked at his watch and said "Sorry, 10:30, kitchen's closed!" Clearly these people didn't know the cardinal rule: Don't f*ck with J, he'll end you. After 15 minutes of arguing with the manager, hopefully getting that stupid girl fired, we left starving. Thanks to Ariba Ariba and our hot waiter there for a great dinner.
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