{"id":94993,"date":"2019-02-09T02:16:50","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T01:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=94993"},"modified":"2019-02-09T02:16:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T01:16:50","slug":"new-york-metropolitan-opera-iolanta-bluebeards-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/new-york-metropolitan-opera-iolanta-bluebeards-castle\/","title":{"rendered":"New York, Metropolitan Opera: “Iolanta” & “Bluebeard’s Castle”"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York, Metropolitan Opera, Season 2018\/2019
\n<\/span><\/em>\u201c<\/span>IOLANTA\u201d
\n<\/b><\/span>Opera in one act,\u00a0libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the play <\/span>King Ren\u00e9\u2019s Daughter <\/i><\/span>by Henrik Hertz.
\nMusic by <\/span>Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/b><\/span>King Ren\u00e9<\/i><\/span>\u00a0 VITALIJ KOWALJOW
\n<\/span>Iolanta<\/i><\/span>\u00a0 SONYA YONCHEVA
\n<\/span>Duke Robert of Burgundy\u00a0<\/i><\/span>ALEXEY MARKOV
\n<\/span>Count Gottfried Vaud\u00e9mont<\/i><\/span>\u00a0 ALEXEY DOLGOV
\n<\/span>Ibn-Hakia<\/i><\/span>\u00a0 ELCHIN AZIZOV
\nMartha LARISSA DIADKOVA
\n<\/span>Brigitta\u00a0<\/i><\/span> ASHLEY EMERSON
\n<\/span>Laura <\/i><\/span> MEGAN MARINO
\n<\/span>Bertrand<\/i><\/span> HAROLD WILSON
\n<\/span>Alm\u00e9ric <\/i><\/span> MARK SCHOWALTER
\n<\/span><\/b>\u201c<\/span>BLUEBEARD\u2019S CASTLE\u201d
\n<\/b><\/span>Opera in one act, libretto by B\u00e9la Bal\u00e1zs, based on the fairy tale by Charles Perrault.
\nMusic by\u00a0<\/span>B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/b><\/span>Judith<\/i><\/span>\u00a0 ANGELA DENOKE
\n<\/span>Duke Bluebeard<\/i><\/span>\u00a0 GERALD FINLEY
\nChorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera
\nConductor<\/span>\u00a0Henrik <\/span><\/b>N\u00e1n\u00e1si<\/b>,
\nProduction<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Mariusz Tre\u0142inski\u00a0<\/span><\/b>
\nSet Designer<\/span>\u00a0Boris Kudli\u010dka<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/b><\/span>Costume Designer<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Marek Adamski<\/span><\/b>
\nLighting Designer<\/span>\u00a0Marc Heinz<\/span><\/b>
\nProjection Designer<\/span>\u00a0Bartek Macias<\/span><\/b>
\nChoreographer<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Tomasz Jan Wygoda
\n<\/b><\/span>Co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera.
\n<\/span>New York, 24 January, 2019
\n<\/i><\/span>B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k\u2019s only opera, Bluebeard\u2019s Castle, <\/i>premiered in 1918 shortly before the end of World War I at what was still called the Royal Opera House in Budapest. The piece was not a hit. During the composer\u2019s lifetime (he died in New York in 1945), there was one revival in Budapest (in 1936) and three other productions, two in German (in Frankfurt and Berlin) and one in Italian (Florence). Bart\u00f3k was not, therefore, inspired to work again in the operatic form. The opera\u2019s transformation from obscurity to ubiquity, to its present position among the most beloved of twentieth-century scores has been an astonishment. The small cast (two singers, no chorus) and the static drama make it a favorite for orchestral performance, as does the work\u2019s brevity. These things also make it a popular choice for adventurous stage directors, but in the opera house it is a bit short for a full evening, and there is no obvious choice for a pairing. At the Met, it was first paired (in 1974, in English) with Gianni Schicchi. <\/i>Later this was changed for Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s Erwartung,<\/i> both works given in their original tongues. Erwartung <\/i>also moves through a symbolic, dreamlike narrative.
\n\"\"<\/a>Currently, the Met pairs the opera with Tchaikovsky\u2019s Iolanta, <\/i>like Bluebeard <\/i>a one-act opera with a fable-like story set in fifteenth-century France\u2014insofar as either work is set in any particular time or place. They have little else\u2014musically, very little indeed\u2014in common. Iolanta<\/i>, Tchaikovky\u2019s last opera, is a number-opera, old-fashioned for its era, with little of the mood-painting or psychological underpinning of his previous drama, The Queen of Spades<\/i>. Iolanta <\/i>tells of a blind princess who can only be cured if she learns there is a sense, sight, that she does not possess\u2014a fact her father, the saturnine King Ren\u00e9, has concealed from her since birth, allowing none of her servants to mention things like color or distant views. But a stranger comes, falls in love, and asks her for a red rose\u2014but she keeps giving him white ones. The secret is out! In the expressionistic, tonally uneasy Bluebeard<\/i>, the lovely young bride insists (on the very first night!) on learning every secret of her glum and taciturn husband. She defies the rumors\u2014but she\u2019s heard them all right\u2014that he\u2019s murdered his previous wives, and she ignores his warnings to leave certain doors unopened. In the Mariusz Tre\u0142inski<\/b> staging of this quirky double bill now revived at the Met, Iolanta\u2019s charming flower garden is a cell in a dismal swamp full of uprooted trees and half-seen beasts. Everything is black or white or shades of brown\u2014except the red roses and Iolanta\u2019s blue dress. Even the two invading knights wear white ski togs. As for Bluebeard\u2019s Castle, in the mated production, the uprooted trees return, but they seem to surround an elevator shaft that descends ever deeper, symbolically, into an inner consciousness. The only color is Judith\u2019s green dress. Tre\u0142inski seems to wish to make a connection between the overprotective father, King Ren\u00e9, and the unquestioning faith of his na\u00efve daughter\u2014until dawning love stirs her curiosity\u2014and the morbid Bluebeard, who (we discover) keeps his brides (dead or undead?) in the seventh and innermost of his dungeons. The question about the outer world that liberates Iolanta is the question about his inner world that imprisons Judith. Love conquers nothing here. Solitude reigns.
\nThe Met has put a luxurious cast into these works, as it often does with modern works like The Rake\u2019s \"\"<\/a>Progress <\/i>and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk <\/i>whose appeal to their conservative audience can be doubted. Sonya Yoncheva<\/b> sings Iolanta with a lovely flowing line and more hesitation, more nervous expresoin than the brash Anna Netrebko<\/b> gave the role when the production premiered in 2015. Yoncheva seemed touchingly desperate at times, which suited the gloom of the set. I had been looking forward to Matthew Polenzani<\/b>\u2019s Vaud\u00e9mont, but on opening night he was indisposed, replaced by a young Russian tenor, Alexey Dolgov<\/b>, who made a most appealing, ardent impression. Vitalij Kowaljow<\/b>, whose dark, sinister bass, an instrument of restrained power and great character in the Bulgarian tradition of Ghiaurov and Christoff, has been waiting in the wings for too many years, in my opinion, for the proper showcase role. He\u2019s always interesting, internal, implying as much as his rich instrument declares, and his Ren\u00e9 drew attention to this underwritten role and his brooding presence in his daughter\u2019s imprisonment. Alexey Markov<\/b>, who possesses a very agreeable baritone sound, sang the rather pointless role of Duke Robert most agreeably\u2014but do we need <\/i>an aria from this character, and right when the climax is upon us? Harold Wilson <\/b>and the great Larissa Diadkova <\/b>undertook the small parts of the woodcutter and his wife who care for Iolanta with the proper style. Henrik N\u00e1n\u00e1si<\/b>, making his house debut, led a sure and logical progression of the moody melodies and soothing underscoring of Tchaikovsky\u2019s score. But I suspect that, like us, he was holding himself back for the evening\u2019s pi\u00e8ce r\u00e9sistance.
\n<\/i>\"\"<\/a>Angela Denoke<\/b>, a singing actress of international remark, is better known in New York as a lieder artist than an opera star\u2014she made her Met debut last year as the Marschallin. Her tall, slim Judith resembled one of the uprooted trees surrounding the impressionistic castle into which set designer Boris Kudli\u010dka <\/b>had transformed Iolanta\u2019s forest cell. Her voice swells in an ardent if chalky, Germanic voluptuosness as Judith\u2019s love for her unknown, unknowable spouse battles with ever rising, choking terror. She implied this terror with little gestures, kept to herself so that he <\/i>should not see them\u2014but he did\u2014and so did we. This is an opera of repressed panic. It was therefore a bit disappointing that her one moment of release, the spectacular high C upon the opening of the Fifth Door, was not in her arsenal, at least on the first night. The orchestra\u2014and here Maestro N\u00e1n\u00e1si and the Met Orchestra allowed themselves to blaze out as if this were not a tale of hidden personalities in hidden conflict. The orchestra tossed through the scores intricacies like a happy stallion at play, free at last, delighting in every sonority. The Bluebeard on this occasion was another of the world\u2019s great singing actors, Gerard Finley<\/b>, who is even taller and more brooding a presence than Denoke\u2019s Judith.\"\"<\/a> Whenever I have heard Mr. Finley at the Met, the enormous house has seemed a size too large for him\u2014as it is for many British singers\u2014but he never makes the mistake of oversinging or bluster to compensate. Bluebeard, so private yet so overwhelming, so likely to swallow a bride when he opens his mouth as to produce a sound, is clearly a role that means a lot to him, one that he intends to mean a great deal to us. His quietness on this occasion seemed an acting choice, a restraint. He did not threaten Judith with vocal power but with stern gesture and hauteur. He seemed to be dreaming the later scenes, as if depicting his inner world and the place Judith, his fantasy now and not a real woman, would play in his sanctum henceforward. This was luxury casting in many ways\u2014louder Bluebeards and higher Judiths have made glorious impressions (as I say, the opera gets done a lot, and done well<\/i>\u2014the New York Philharmonic is doing it next year, paired with Erwartung<\/i><\/span>), but here the weird Tre\u0142inski production came into its own. One might have wished to hear the singers in a smaller room\u2014that is the only thing one would have changed. Photo Marty Sohl \/ Met Opera<\/em><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York, Metropolitan Opera, Season 2018\/2019 \u201cIOLANTA\u201d Opera in one act,\u00a0libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":94996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4672,18134,3897,1382,981,13664,14944,9354,3561,7199,9263,4817,3387,10224,1286,12426,6765,9769,8083,7228],"class_list":["post-94993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-alexey-dolgov","tag-alexey-markov","tag-angela-denoke","tag-anna-netrebko","tag-bela-bartok","tag-bluebeards-castle","tag-boris-kudlicka","tag-foreign-readers","tag-gerard-finley","tag-harold-wilson","tag-henrik-nanasi","tag-iolanta","tag-larissa-diadkova","tag-mariusz-trelinski","tag-matthew-polenzani","tag-metropolitan-opera-house","tag-metropolitan-opera-orchestra","tag-pyotr-ilyich-tchaikovsky","tag-sonya-yoncheva","tag-vitalij-kowaljow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94993","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=94993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94994,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94993\/revisions\/94994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}