Opera at the Met may mean expensively lavish stagings with the world’s biggest stars, but that’s not all you’ll find at Lincoln Center. Running there now concurrently are revivals of two Mozart masterpieces that amply demonstrate that the Met can also deliver wonderfully entertaining ensemble operas. That shouldn’t suggest that their casts don’t include superior artists delivering exceptional performances, but you won’t find marquee names that guarantee sold-out houses.
We’ve come a long way from the days when it was nearly impossible to snag a ticket to hear Leontyne Price, Birgit Nilsson or Luciano Pavarotti. That situation has become all too apparent at the Met since its continuing banishment of tainted superstar Anna Netrebko. But unlike many works by Puccini, Verdi or Wagner, Mozart’s operas demand charismatic singing actors working closely together with a minimum of diva/divo posturing. In late March, the first nights of this season’s Die Zauberflöte and Le Nozze di Figaro revivals were packed with enthusiastic, markedly younger audiences having the best of times.
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Two years ago, the company achieved a remarkable May Mozart Miracle when it premiered stimulating new productions of Don Giovanni by Ivo van Hove and Die Zauberflöte by Simon McBurney, both magnificently conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann. If this season’s revivals didn’t achieve those exalted musical levels, they delivered securely confident renditions of complexly demanding works, a pair of operas that couldn’t be more different from each other.
Zauberflöte, a German-language singspiel and Mozart’s next-to-last opera, tenaciously juxtaposes sublime episodes of noble lovers overcoming serious obstacles with ribald comedy involving a lovelorn bird-catcher. Nozze, drawn from Beaumarchais’s revolutionary play and sung in Italian, brings us a near-perfect comedy of manners. McBurney’s celebrated production of the former embraces all of the work’s many contradictions head-on in a wild contemporary ride that features sound effects from a real-time Foley Artist and live projected drawings that fill the back of the mostly bare stage. Reset in the 1930s, Richard Eyre’s Nozze from 2014 mostly ignores the work’s pathos and rumblings of class warfare in favor of a Downton Abbey-flavored farcical approach.
Having been ecstatically transported by McBurney’s antic vision at its premiere two years ago, I was worried that it would be less satisfying on second viewing. I needn’t have been concerned as it once again proved deliriously satisfying. Conductor Evan Rogister’s fleet vision of the score sometimes moved too fast for comfort, so there were instances when he and his cast parted ways. But overall, the orchestra, which is raised up from the pit and fully visible throughout, played with a lively sheen. Prince Tamino’s magic flute and Papageno’s glockenspiel are prominently featured, and Chelsea Knox and Katelan Tràn Terrell respectively relished their moments in the spotlight.
Several in the cast reprised their roles from two years ago. Alexandra Shiner, Olivia Vote and Tamara Mumford once again shone as the mellifluous and horny Ladies, as their mistress Kathryn Lewek demonstrated why—for more than a decade—she’s been the world’s go-to Queen of the Night. She imbued her first aria with gut-wrenching pathos, her second with astonishing ferocity. Yet after nearly eighty outings there as the Queen, shouldn’t the Met offer Lewek other roles?
Stephen Milling towered over everyone as a severe Sarastro. Though he exuded calm authority, he found the role’s extreme low notes difficult. Thomas Olliemans continues to reign supreme as McBurney’s ragtag Papageno of choice: his pleasing, if ordinary, baritone married to affably impeccable timing again made him the opera’s irresistible Everyman.
Ben Bliss and Golda Schultz, this season’s new hero and heroine, brought vibrant conviction and suave Mozartean style to Tamino and Pamina. Bliss’s bright tenor has grown adding a welcome heroic dimension to the prince, particularly in his stirring interview with Shenyang’s rough-hewn Speaker. Schultz’s always glowing soprano broke our hearts with her grief-stricken “Ach, ich fühls” and then greeted her beloved with a radiant “Tamino mein!”
Eight days later, Joana Mallwitz made her Met debut conducting a bustling Nozze for which she elicited a richly transparent reading from her eagerly buoyant orchestra, now back in the pit. She accompanied her singers with alert concentration, which was not an easy task as they negotiated Eyre’s screwball comedy with split-second timing. Mallwitz brought her first Met Mozart to a triumphant close by following Federica Lombardi’s heavenly spun lines of forgiveness with a riotous but controlled final ensemble.
Lombardi, as the coolly elegant Countess, demonstrated that the rigors of her very recent first stab at Bellini’s Norma in Vienna hadn’t caused any ill effects beyond a slight harshness on her highest forte notes. That the statuesque Countess was an inch or two taller than her philandering husband only added to the well-deserved comeuppance meted out to Joshua Hopkins’s strutting Count. His lean, ringing baritone, so thrilling in his boastful aria, contrasted perfectly with Michael Sumuel’s hearty, earthier bass-baritone as Figaro.
Sumuel opted for a less rebellious approach to the wily servant than some have, but his wide-open smile and earnest command of every situation made him a thoroughly winning Figaro. Ukrainian soprano Olga Kulchynska finally got her chance to move beyond Puccini at the Met, demonstrating a deft Mozart flair as a lovely, lively Susanna. Her sweetly blooming voice blended divinely with Lombardi’s richer soprano in a ravishing Letter Duet.
French mezzo Marianne Crebassa was due to return to the Met in her debut role of Cherubino but withdrew earlier this year. The Met then awarded the plum part of the randy adolescent to young Sun-ly Pierce, who glowed impetuously in her graceful arias and bonded with palpable chemistry to the charmingly forthright Barbarina of Mei Gui Zhang.
Brenton Ryan’s handsomely bold Basilio was a refreshing take on the role, However, Elizabeth Bishop’s worn mezzo gave limited pleasure as Marcellina, Figaro’s newly reunited mother, while Maurizio Muraro who has portrayed Bartolo (Mozart’s and Rossini’s) more than a hundred times at Lincoln Center huffed and puffed through his tart aria.
Both Die Zauberflöte and Le Nozze di Figaro continue at the Met through April 26. That afternoon, the latter will be beamed around the world in HD. Inopportune scheduling means that Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Nozze’s “prequel,” will arrive in theaters a month later, on May 31. Also in May, five new principals will join Mallwitz for more Nozze performances. Of particular interest will be rising American soprano Jacquelyn Stucker in her Met debut as the Countess; Rosa Feola, a rare native Italian Suanna: and tall, slim mezzo Emily D’Angelo in her first Met Cherubino, a role she was surely born to play.
