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--- met:opening_night_sept_22_2008 [2008/09/23 09:53] – tomgee
+++ met:opening_night_sept_22_2008 [2008/10/03 11:08] (current) – tomgee
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 The musically transcendent finale of Capriccio, conducted by Patrick Summers, music director of the Houston Grand Opera, concludes the evening, with Fleming in a costume created by John Galliano.
-===== Met Gala Brings Millions, Martha, Fleming: Manuela Hoelterhoff =====
+===== Met Gala Brings Millions, Martha, Fleming=====
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 By Manuela Hoelterhoff
-Enlarge Image/Details
 Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Usually the setting for shouting matches around the prompt box between temperamental divas and short tenors, the Metropolitan Opera opening last night featured three haute-couture designers and one shape-changing soprano, the fabled Renee Fleming.
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 (Manuela Hoelterhoff is executive editor of Muse, Bloomberg's leisure and arts section. Any opinions expressed are her own.)
+===== Fleming Gala Opens the Met’s Season =====
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+//An audience in Times Square had a free treat on Monday evening: projections of the Metropolitan Opera’s opening night, with Renée Fleming in excerpts from “La Traviata,” “Manon” and “Capriccio.”// \\
+The Metropolitan Opera opened its 125th-anniversary season on Monday evening with a gala Renée Fleming showcase. Everything about the three-part evening was fashioned, quite literally, for Ms. Fleming.
+She was featured in three favorite roles: Violetta in Act II 0f Verdi’s “Traviata”; Manon in Act III of Massenet’s “Manon”; and the Countess in the final scene of Strauss’s “Capriccio.” To lend an extra touch of diva dazzle to the evening, the Met commissioned three renowned fashion designers to create Ms. Fleming’s costumes: Christian Lacroix for “Traviata,” Karl Lagerfeld for “Manon” and John Galliano for “Capriccio.”
+For weeks waggish opera bloggers had dubbed the evening “The Renée Fleming Fashion Show,” “The Renéesance” and such. And in a way the gala was, as the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb said recently on “Charlie Rose,” a “kind of retro affair.”
+Mr. Gelb had been critical of the Met’s penchant, under his predecessors, for presenting an opening-night gala as a showcase for a star, or a pair of stars, in sundry acts from existing productions. A major opera company, he argued, should open its season with a major statement, meaning an ambitious new production, as he did during his first two seasons with Anthony Minghella’s cinematic production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” in 2006 and Mary Zimmerman’s updated staging of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” in 2007.
+But Ms. Fleming had been promised a chance to anchor an entire opening night before Mr. Gelb’s arrival. She is one of the Met’s most valuable and popular stars, so naturally Mr. Gelb honored that promise.
+There were the typical posh trappings to this glittery opening night. Celebrities and dignitaries could be spotted arriving on the red carpet and wandering the aisles, including Helen Mirren, Barbara Cook, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Henry and Nancy Kissinger. But to give a populist reach to the gala, the performance was broadcast live to a network of high-definition movie houses in some 500 theaters in North America and Argentina. Hundreds more saw the performance on simulcast screens set up in nearby Fordham Plaza (since the Lincoln Center Plaza is closed for reconstruction) and in Times Square.
+Ms. Fleming wanted her special night and wanted to make it enjoyably luxurious. Still, she had serious artistic goals. Hearing her in three works of such contrasting styles did not make for the most cogent operatic experience. But it was a challenging feat to bring off. She gave her all and, for the most part, sang beautifully.
+In Act II of “Traviata,” when we find Violetta living in an airy country home near Paris with her smitten lover, Alfredo, Ms. Fleming, from her first phrases, sang with supple phrasing and found a distinctive vocal coloring — earthy, tremulous, clarion — to match the dramatic and musical moment. As is her way, she took a boldly expressive approach to dynamics, which is not to all tastes. Still, I have seldom heard the music sung with such rhythmic honesty.
+The tenor Ramón Vargas was an impassioned Alfredo. But the baritone Thomas Hampson was disappointing as Alfredo’s patriarchal father Germont. His singing, though powerful and burnished, was too often blunt and bellowed. He made a stiff-backed father, so determined to extricate his son from this scandalous affair that he seemed impervious to the personal dignity of Ms. Fleming’s vulnerable Violetta.
+In the second scene of Act II, when the story moves to the soirée at the Paris home of the wealthy Flora, another Met audience was made to endure Franco Zeffirelli’s garish sets, exceeded in their tasteless extravagance only by the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Still, James Levine conducted a taut, exciting performance, so nimble and bracing that it reminded me of the classic Toscanini recording.
+Marco Armiliato conducted Act III of “Manon,” in the highly stylized, handsome production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. The act begins at an outdoor fair in Paris, a scene crowded with festive people: vendors, acrobats and more. Ms. Fleming, as the coquettish and fatally superficial young Manon played things to the hilt, tossing off the florid and coyly alluring melodies, soaking up the adulation of the crowd. But she was at her best in the second scene. Learning that the disconsolate lover she abandoned, the Chevalier des Grieux, is about to take vows as a priest, she tracks him down at the Chapel St. Sulpice and lures him back during an intense and unrelenting duet. Mr. Vargas, as des Grieux, was again in ardent form.
+But the highlight of the program was the final 20-minute scene, nearly a soliloquy, from Strauss’s final opera, “Capriccio.” This opera is a breezy yet profound dialectical drama that explores an aesthetic question: Is the music more important than the words in a song, an opera?
+The debate is embodied in the opera’s love triangle, with two men, a composer and a poet, competing for the affection of the widowed Countess, who in this final scene must decide how the opera her suitors are writing jointly should end: in effect, choosing between them.
+As the Countess facing the question, Ms. Fleming lovingly shaped the arching, infectious phrases and showed this keenly perceptive character going through bouts of confusion, girlish ardor, flattered vanity and world-weary resignation.
+She looked glamorous in the black dress and Art Deco-styled cape that Mr. Galliano designed for her. At least I think the style was Art Deco. Fashion is not my thing. You can see for yourself in an online montage linked to this article, not to mention a lavish spread in the current issue of Vogue, with Ms. Fleming modeling all of her designer costumes.
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