{"id":94786,"date":"2019-01-13T11:06:43","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T10:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=94786"},"modified":"2019-01-16T19:25:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T18:25:06","slug":"new-york-metropolitan-opera-adriana-lecouvreur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/new-york-metropolitan-opera-adriana-lecouvreur\/","title":{"rendered":"New York, Metropolitan Opera: “Adriana Lecouvreur”"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York, Metropolitan Opera season 2018 \/ 2019
\n<\/i><\/span>\u201cADRIANA LECOUVREUR\u201d
\n<\/b><\/span>Opera in four acts, libretto by Arturo Colautti, based on the play by Eug\u00e8ne Scribe and Ernest Legouv\u00e9. <\/span>Music by\u00a0<\/span>Francesco Cilea
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>Adriana Lecouvreur\u00a0<\/i><\/span>ANNA NETREBKO
\n<\/span><\/span>Il Prince de Bouillon\u00a0<\/i><\/span>MAURIZIO MURARO
\n<\/span><\/span>La Principessa de Bouillon <\/i><\/span>ANITA RACHVELISHVILI
\n<\/span><\/span>Maurizio \u00a0<\/i><\/span>PIOTR BECZA\u0141A
\n<\/span><\/span>Michonnet\u00a0<\/i><\/span>AMBROGIO MAESTRI
\n<\/span><\/span>Mlle Jouvenot\u00a0<\/i><\/span>SARAH JOY MILLER
\n<\/span><\/span>Poisson\u00a0<\/i><\/span>TONY STEVENSON
\n<\/span><\/span>Mlle Dangeville\u00a0<\/i><\/span>SAMANTHA HANKEY
\n<\/span><\/span>Quinault\u00a0<\/i><\/span>PATRICK CARFIZZI
\n<\/span><\/span>Abb\u00e9 Chazeuil\u00a0<\/i><\/span>CARLO BOSI
\n<\/span><\/span>Major-Domo\u00a0<\/i><\/span>CHRISTIAN ROZAKIS
\n<\/span><\/span>Mlle. Duclos\u00a0<\/i><\/span>SNEZHANA CHERNOVA
\n<\/span>Paris <\/i><\/span>KFIR DANIELI<\/span>
\nMercury <\/i><\/span>BRADLEY SHELVER<\/span>
\nJupiter <\/i><\/span>ARTHUR LAZALDE<\/span>
\nJuno <\/i><\/span>ERIN KERNION<\/span>
\nVenus <\/i><\/span>CAJAI FELLOWS JOHNSON<\/span>
\nMinerva <\/i><\/span>SARAH KAY MARCHETTI<\/span>
\nDiscord\u00a0<\/i><\/span>MARIA PHEGAN
\n<\/span><\/span>Orchestra and Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera
\n<\/span>Conductor\u00a0<\/span>Gianandrea Noseda
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>Chorus Master\u00a0<\/span>Donald Palumbo
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>Production\u00a0<\/span>Sir David McVicar
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>Set Designer\u00a0<\/span>Charles Edwards
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>Costume Designer\u00a0<\/span>Brigitte Reiffenstuel
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>Lighting Designer\u00a0<\/span>Adam Silverman
\n<\/b><\/span>Choreographer\u00a0<\/span>Andrew George
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>New York, 4 January, 2019
\n<\/i><\/span>\"\"<\/a>On the subway beside me after a performance of Cilea\u2019s Adriana Lecouvreur <\/i>at the Met, two ladies of a certain age were expressing their delight with the evening\u2019s event\u2014and very pleased they were! As well might they be, with the tip-top cast and the charmingly \u201crealistic\u201d David McVicar <\/b>production in Charles Edwards\u2019 <\/b>sets, which place us backstage in the Com\u00e9die Fran\u00e7aise, of which Adrienne Lecouvreur was the unrivaled star in 1730, and then retains that backstage \u201cmotif\u201d for every other sphere of her life and the opera\u2019s plot (high society, low intrigue, deathbed) to proclaim the theatricality of life in rococo Paris. The production, after the common way of such things, was introduced at Covent Garden nine years ago and has also been seen in Vienna, Paris, Barcelona and San Francisco. \u201cThe thing I don\u2019t understand,\u201d one of my two ladies complained, \u201cis why this opera isn\u2019t given more often.\u201d Well, it\u2019s done infrequently because there isn\u2019t much substance to the pretty score, which has the style and brevity and visible activity of Verismo but little of the passion that opera audiences expected on the lyric stage in 1902. Instead of chronicling the murderous and amorous misbehavior of peasant or laborer classes for the delight of civilized urban opera-goers, Adriana <\/i>dredges up one of the long-dead Eug\u00e8ne Scribe\u2019s costume melodramas based (shakily) on real people who lived long ago, and surrounds them with lacy faux-archaic tunefulness. The great climax of the drama is not an aria at all but an unaccompanied spoken \u201ctirade\u201d from Racine\u2019s Ph\u00e8dre. <\/i>Singers in the heyday of Verismo preferred more blood and thunder in their music. In Adriana, <\/i>colorful shmattas are half the fun, and here Brigitte Reiffenstuhl<\/b>\u2019s costumes did not stint\u2014except that, in 1730, no one appeared at any grand occasion in her or his own unpowdered hair, but only in formal white wigs, even on the battlefield and certainly in the boudoir. Just look at a still from any previous production of the opera. This one establishes its twenty-first-century origins by omitting all the wigs. (Did this save them money?) Otherwise, we are indeed in Paris in 1730, backstage at a performance by the sublime Lecouvreur, where the love affairs of Maurice de Saxe (Maurizio) tangle awkwardly with his aspirations to ascend the throne of the duchy of Courland.
\n<\/span>Maurizio (Piotr Beczala<\/b>) is having dangerous liaisons with both the Princesse de Bouillon (Anita\"\"<\/a> Rachvelishvili<\/b>), whose political influence is useful just as long as her husband (Maurizio Muraro<\/b>) doesn\u2019t find out about it, and with Adriana herself (Anna Netrebko<\/b>), star of the Com\u00e9die, who\u2014poor na\u00efve child\u2014is unaware that the adjutant she adores is none other than the famous Maurizio in disguise. And though Adriana does not know it, the chief of the Com\u00e9die, Michonnet (Ambrogio Maestri<\/b>) is also in love with her, and hopeless asides touch our hearts between passionate outbursts from the others. Let\u2019s say here that if you produce this slight but melodious sort of opera with a cast on this level, you are going to make a great many opera lovers happy whatever the vehicle. All three of the leads look handsome and emotionally disheveled (it\u2019s their not having powdered wigs proper to their extreme emotional states), and they hurl themselves about the stage as if the story meant everything to them. It\u2019s too bad they weren\u2019t giving their all to a meatier opera, to La Gioconda <\/i>or La Forza del Destino<\/i>. But Adriana <\/i>will do in a pinch.
\n<\/span>Netrebko<\/strong>, whose voice has become ever deeper and grander, toys with tentative expressiveness (does Maurizio mean <\/i>the things he says to her?) or grinding out chesty rage as she faces down her aristocratic rival. She is passionate, self-deprecating, often touching, especially in the anguish of \u201cPoveri fiori.\u201d My only regret about the size and intensity of her instrument in this opera is that it so closely resembles the old-fashioned gutsy mezzo of Rachvelishvili. In an opera when the tenor must choose between them (especially since he is actively romantically involved with both), it would be nice to have a clearer audible contrast to explain his preference. The Princesse is written for impassioned, outraged utterance; we believe she is obsessed and we understand why Maurizio has tired of it. Adriana\u2019s soprano should strike a gentler, more adorable tone (as when Caball\u00e9 <\/b>and Freni <\/b>sang it). But this lack of contrast did not interfere with the sensual pleasure of experiencing Netrebko in the role.
\n<\/span>\"\"<\/a>Rachvelishvili<\/strong> is currently the singer New York\u2019s musical media are shouting about. Her Carmen <\/i>has long been a crowd-pleaser here, but this season she has cut loose as Amneris and (upcoming) Dalila. She is an actress of unrelieved tension, feeling the frustrations that then pour into room-filling song, and audiences respond powerfully. But where Carmen, the girl of the streets, gave her just the right scope (some other Met Carmens<\/i> have been far too ladylike, recently), the Princesse de Bouillon is an aristocrat, and she prowls the stage like a kitchen wench who has stolen her ladyship\u2019s gown and jewels (though not her wig). In a part with only two scenes, who spends most of her time in one of them offstage hidden in a closet, Rachvelishvili made a shattering, an outstanding effect. But was it the right effect?
\n<\/span>Caught between these two blustering females, Piotr Beczala\u2019s Maurizo looked the part, peacock strut and all, and sang unsubtly. The account of his heroics at the Battle of Mittau\u2014the longest bit of vocalism in Act III, which is otherwise cluttered with ballet and tirade\u2014was sung with notable masculine gusto, hurled out triumphantly to cow the fops about court. But his love music, taming Adriana, soothing the Princesse, attending the tragic birthday party of Act IV, demonstrated a similar bluster and little of the mellow romantic. I hope he will calm down in later performances.
\n<\/span>Ambrogio Maestri<\/strong> sang Michonnet, the evening\u2019s most tragic figure, in a way, since his love fo\"\"<\/a>r Adriana is one he dares not express aloud (except to us). Stout and bearlike, Maestri\u2019s looks are ideal for this role, and his smooth basso, full of character that never defies the principles of bel canto, provides a warm, polished and affecting vision of the opera\u2019s odd man out. Among the show\u2019s many minor figures (Scribe always gave the character roles something amusing to do), Carlo Bosi<\/b> provided serpentine charm for the salon priest who attempts to seduce the Princesse while serving as go-between for her husband\u2019s amours. Gianandrea Noseda <\/b>massaged the score into the glittering sheen that dazzled audiences weary of Puccini\u2019s familiar thrills. The tunes may be repetitious (here it comes again! Up another step!) and they may outstay their welcome after a day or two worming the ear, but as I said above, the audience who had gratefully forgotten the last time they\u2019d heard it were overjoyed to hear Adriana<\/i><\/span> sounding so fresh and worthwhile.Photo: Ken Howard \/ Met Opera<\/em><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York, Metropolitan Opera season 2018 \/ 2019 \u201cADRIANA LECOUVREUR\u201d Opera in four acts, libretto by Arturo Colautti, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":94791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1906,1290,2568,1382,21807,3248,18044,934,9354,8322,1696,5352,812,4486],"class_list":["post-94786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-adriana-lecouvreur","tag-ambrogio-maestri","tag-anita-rachvelishvili","tag-anna-netrebko","tag-brigitte-reiffenstuhl","tag-carlo-bosi","tag-charles-edwards","tag-david-mcvicar","tag-foreign-readers","tag-francesco-cilea","tag-gianandrea-noseda","tag-maurizio-muraro","tag-metropolitan-opera","tag-piotr-beczala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}