There were some great shows at the Metropolitan Opera this season. I went three times to a vividly grim new production of Strauss’s “Salome” and to a revival of his sprawling “Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” and I would have happily returned to either one.
But overall the season, which ends on Saturday with a final performance of John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” had considerably more misses than hits.
Lately, the company has given more resources to contemporary work. That’s an admirable endeavor — and a risky one, both financially and creatively. This season the Met presented four recent operas, none of them box office home runs or truly satisfying artistically.
“Antony and Cleopatra” had passages of Adams’s enigmatic melancholy, but the piece slogged under reams of dense Shakespearean verse. “Grounded,” by Jeanine Tesori and George Brant, which opened the season in September, starred a potent Emily D’Angelo as a drone operator, but couldn’t rise above a thin score. Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s “Ainadamar,” its music raucously eclectic, struggled to make its dreamlike account of Federico García Lorca’s death into compelling drama.
Best of the bunch was “Moby-Dick,” by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, a bit bland musically but at least clear and convincingly moody. The tenor Brandon Jovanovich’s world-weary Ahab, stalking the stage with a belted-on peg leg, has stayed with me.
So too has the pairing of a volatile Julia Bullock and Gerald Finley, the embodiment of weathered authority, as Adams’s Cleopatra and Antony. Among other strong performances, Ben Bliss and Golda Schultz, the two leads in a revival of a scruffy staging of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte,” sang with melting poise.
Kathryn Lewek, one of the world’s leading Queens of the Night, managed to dash off her stratospheric “Zauberflöte” arias without stinting nuance. And at the end of the season, the baritone Alexey Markov, long the Met’s go-to Count Tomsky in Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades,” was again sonorous and witty in this smallish yet important role, the best part of a mild-mannered revival.
But there was a lot of blah over the past eight months. Michael Mayer’s new production of Verdi’s “Aida” tossed an Indiana Jones-type framing device around a stale, projection-heavy staging, wanly cast for opening night on New Year’s Eve. Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” was frenetically and unfunnily conducted by Giacomo Sagripanti. Fall runs of “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” and “Il Trovatore” felt like filler.
Memorable performances this season were few and far between, but here are some that particularly delighted and moved me.
Quinn Kelsey in ‘Tosca’
Lise Davidsen, one of the world’s most exciting Strauss and Wagner sopranos, still seemed to be feeling her way into the turbulent title character when her run in Puccini’s “Tosca” began in November. Far more settled in and intriguing was the baritone Quinn Kelsey as her antagonist, the malignant police chief Scarpia.
Kelsey’s tone — capacious, shadowed, echoey — has the individuality that is the mark of all great singers. Rather than playing a stereotypically bullish, brutal villain, he was a Scarpia of rare charm and erotic charge, more compelling than Tosca’s ostensible love interest. Kelsey also revived his hulking yet vulnerable Rigoletto this season, and, as Amonasro, tried his best to inflame the dull new “Aida.”
‘Die Frau Ohne Schatten’
Returning for the first time since 2013, Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s loopy yet stirring, sprawling and densely orchestrated fairy tale provided a reminder that Herbert Wernicke’s modern, splendidly grand production is one of the strongest in the company’s repertory. Few spectacles at the Met are more magical than the play of light on the vast mirrored box that is Wernicke’s vision of the opera’s spirit realm.
The conducting of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, was sumptuous but not particularly insightful; the cast was solid but hardly flawless. This is one work, though, that, pushing an opera company to its limits, almost always ends up feeling like more than the sum of its parts. It was performed with earnest enthusiasm, and Michael Volle was poignantly humane as Barak, the good-natured dyer.
Lise Davidsen in ‘Fidelio’
Davidsen’s voice was better suited to the noble pronouncements of Leonore in Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” in March, than to Tosca’s heated passions, even though you still wanted this gorgeously serene soprano to take more vocal and dramatic risks.
On the podium, Susanna Malkki was spirited yet sensible, like her star. Among a generally strong supporting cast, Ying Fang, a pristine Mozartean, was soaringly sweet as Marzelline.
Joana Mallwitz conducting ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’
It wasn’t a particularly interesting year for maestros at the Met. One exception was Joana Mallwitz, a rising star in Europe who made her company debut with Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.” Mozart seems simple, but the music can be treacherous, requiring precise coordination to avoid sogginess.
Mallwitz was in calm, stylish command from the brisk overture on. She kept the orchestra sounding light and silky, allowing it to blend (instead of compete) with the charming singers, and she patiently paced the action, releasing tension then building it again. Best, among a likable cast, was Federica Lombardi, who floated through the Countess’s arias and gave the character the right mixture of reserve and vibrancy.
Peter Mattei in ‘Salome’
The tour de force of the season came in the spring: Claus Guth’s new production of “Salome.” Much of the attention was focused on the intense staging, which set the opera in a stern Victorian mansion; on the clear-voiced, sincere soprano Elza van den Heever in the title role; on the creepy parade of Salome doubles in the Dance of the Seven Veils; and on the blazingly virtuosic playing of the Met’s orchestra under Nézet-Séguin.
But no one who saw the show is likely to forget the Jochanaan of the powder-covered baritone Peter Mattei, commanding in voice and presence. It was hard not to believe prophecies delivered with this focused strength and conviction. Twenty-three years after his Met debut, Mattei remains a pillar of the company.
Video credit: Metropolitan Opera
Zachary Woolfe is the classical music critic of The Times.
The post Watch Five Highlights From the Met Opera Season appeared first on New York Times.
