Trebs! Trebs! Trebs!
Looking fetching in a red dress and boots. And sometimes a weird top hat, why? Who cares!
It’s Trebs and her ridiculously loud voice. Even if you see only the 10 seconds where she
screams “Ascolta” at the top of her lungs on a stratospheric high note followed
by a bellowy foghorned chest note, you’ll go home happy. The rest of the opera was fun too.
To all those who say Trebs can’t do bel canto, seriously,
give up your complaining, she may be
ditching the “ina” roles, but she’s not gonna let go. Just enjoy it for what it is – loud, good,
delicious fun. Yes, we all want to hear
her scream out Puccini and do Verdi (Trovatore, please!!!!), and want to hear her
Onegin (she’s gonna kill the final scene).
But it doesn't mean she ain't not good at bel canto. Sure, some fancy coloratura stuff isn’t quite
perfect, but whatevs, it’s pretty thrilling.
And I’ll take annoying mugging over crap acting / park-and-bark any
day. It may be over the top, but at
least it’s fun. And this is a
comedy. So why not be having fun!
Cheers for the Met dumping the old annoying production. Yeck.
The new one, with its cheesy sets and weird top hats isn’t great, but
it’s not offensive either. Costumes were
fine, nothing too strange. The top hat
was pointless fun, Polenzani’s ass looked unfortunately huge in his pants, while
Mariusz Kweicen’s was strapped into wonderfully tight pants which unfortunately
were completely blocked from sight all night by his stupid military
jacket. Trebs’s dress had a weird cut on
one side that allowed her to constantly flash boot and leg, just for fun.
The best part of the production was the wheat fields, which
moved around randomly during the final minutes of most scenes to reduce time to change to the
next one.
Singing-wise, everything was pretty great. Trebs was fantastic throughout, screaming thrilling high notes at the end of all arias, duets, and ensembles. Using her garbly choked chesty middle voice
to great effect. Some ravishing
pianissimos to remind us how good Manon was last year. And the freaky “ascolta” which reminded me how great Bolena was (the part where she goes psycho on Percy and says she can never see him again).
Mariusz looked hot as always, his character was way more of
an asshole in this production, but it suited him. Ambrogio Maestri (shout out to my new friend JC
who was the person who puts him into his costume every day and got featured in the New Yorker recently), was fantastic and huge
(in appearance, chemistry with Trebs, in voice, and in ability to make the
audience laugh). He actually sang his
funny song, but brilliantly with this horrific whistle between his teeth.
Matthew Polenzani looked great and slimmed down from last year's Traviata, (but for the unfortunate
seat of his pants). His singing gets
better and better. He almost stole the
show with his ridiculous breathing and piano singing in his big aria – I’d
prefer a louder lustier version of it, but he sang it fantastically in his own Mozarty
way.
Definitely worth seeing.
Also a great cutesy date opera to bring fresh victims. How could you not like Trebs dancing on
tables? Dunno if it’ll happen every
night, but there was major clapping when the two finally made out. It looked like serious making out from the
Dress Circle Boxes… overall, highly recommended. Prolly (If you don’t like this annoying word,
blame MT for using it too much and influencing me) should go see the HD for
this one, I imagine it will look and sound great!
+Anna Netrebko
+Anna Netrebko
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