Okay, big splurge of the season: side parterre. I had all kinds of fantasies of seeing someone really famous (Trebs even?) taking in a dose of Guleghina, but, sadly, no-one was in the manager’s box next to me except two old people who fell asleep constantly. But, whatever, Guleghina arrived after a very rousing overture and the fire was ignited. She brought all the crazy. She left some voice at home, I think; less chest, more shrieky on the upper notes. But still fantastic.
Tenor, sorry, twice and I still don’t like you. He has way too much going on in his voice. He reminds me bit of Jose Cura when he screws up high notes and sounds like he’s singing 3 pitches at the same time, like the vocal equivalent of punching the piano. This tenor obviously doesn’t quite do that, but his middle notes have a lot of that mushy discordant quality to them. The high notes are pretty exciting, with less ugly going on, but overall, not a fan. I wonder what he’d sound like in, for example, Tosca, where the tenor only has a few big parts but they are ultra-solo.
The mezzo was fine; clearly not afraid of heights whatsoever (crazy how she leans over the edge of the scarily high set while the bass is hanging on to the railing for dear life). Guleghina's high-whatever at the end of the first scene sounded like an ambulance on steroids; it cut through all sound and tore across the hall.
Act II was much better; I think Guleghina recouped or something. Maybe she did shots during intermission, I don’t know, but she sure came back bringing extra crazy. The whole duet with Nabucco was terrifying, and, of course, the high E that keeps bringing me back was there. Short, sure, but dead-on. And she was determined this time to hold the final note longer than Nabucco, which was kind of fun.
Her death is, I think, my favorite part. Because she sings all of it in that freaky half-voice that no-one else can do that is both loud and pianissimo at the same time. Also, her sleeves are like bat-wings and she uses them to great silent-movie effect. Why anyone from Babylon, which apparently has open flames all over the place, would wear extra big sleeves bound to catch aflame, is beyond me. Maybe she got dressed after she took the poison. I still don’t really understand why the opera ends here; but I do wish more composers realized that the rule is when the soprano dies, everyone wants to stop listening and go home.
So that’s 2 for 4 of Guleghina Nabucco’s this year. I was expecting 1 of 4 to be great, so far 2 solid 8s. Let’s see for next week – will she get better during the run as she learns to work her newly revamped voice to the role, or will she just run out of voice and go back to the old voiceless nothing-above-B that we’re used to?
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