The first appearance of the title character in Luigi Cherubini’s opera Medea is prolonged until it can hardly be endured anymore.
Overture growling, chorus of waiters, lively aria, marching, another chorus, another aria, trio: 40 minutes pass while the audience knows Medea is coming, waits for her, waits more. .
But when she finally shows up — the ultimate wedding crasher who arrives to take revenge on the man who betrayed her — little is left of the opera. to exclude she. In several other works of Kanon, all the characters are featured, but one is very small. “Noma” and “Electra” have a richness beyond their dominant protagonists. “Medea” is almost Medea.
Ups and downs with the power of a prima donna. Thus, the first production of an impressive, if not completely overwhelming, piece of work at the Metropolitan Opera, which opened the company’s season on Tuesday, was underpinned by an impressive and delightful performance by the soprano Sondra. It is not surprising that Radvanovsky.
Radvanovsky writhed against the rejected witches of Greek mythology, challenging them with all his might, skipping high notes, deftly pacing and screaming with all his might. Task. And one of her most difficult legacies, “Medea,” resurrected the song in the 1950s to great acclaim, and corskating recordings on numerous productions have made her an inescapable presence. It is still defined by Maria Callas, who has been
In the 17th and 18th centuries there were operatic depictions of formidable women who were despised and abandoned, such as “Dido and Aeneas”, “Armide” and “Alcina”. But the early audiences of “Medea,” which premiered in French in 1797 as “Médée,” as on Tuesday, and which today is usually performed in translation into Italian, found its intensity, especially the final act could hardly have been prepared for the rawness of It’s essentially a brutal half-hour monologue, concluding with her mother murdering her children.
Conducted by Carlo Rizzi and directed by David McVicar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the opera shakes the blurred lines between classicism and romanticism, and explores the purity and form of Gluck’s music and Mozart’s psychologically charged. I’m listening to the vitality.
The influence of “Medea” can be heard in scenes of violent explosion and sickening madness in subsequent decades of Belcanto works, including Rossini’s “Armida”, Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” and Bellini’s “Norma”. increase. beyond. (The thunderstorm at the beginning of Cherubini’s third act resounds half a century later at the end of Verdi’s Rigoletto.)
It’s a less significant addition to the Mets’ repertoire than Terrence Blanchard’s “Shut Up the Fire in My Bones,” which kicked off the season last fall and was the company’s first opera by a black composer. But “Medea” is a long-awaited premiere and a sensible production. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has steadily taken in a variety of works from his early 19th century, giving audiences the context to appreciate Cherubini’s score as an incarnation of what was to come. .
This also fits in with Radvanovsky’s long career in New York. She sang Anna Her Bolena and other leading soprano roles in Donizetti’s Tudor trilogy at The Met, and in 2017 kicked off her company’s season with McVicar’s new production “Norma.”
Her voice, which once had a chalky, loud, unruly solemn tone that excited many listeners and turned others off, has mellowed in recent years. The different parts of her range began to flow together more organically, even as her upper register surged like a sudden step on the gas.
As her voice became more integrated, the epic effect it was once capable of has faded a little. But it wasn’t entirely safe just for her recitative on Tuesday…before the aria “Dei tuoi figli.” But that difficult aria was a fine balance of quiet hurt and flashes of anger. In the final act, Radvanovski crept onto the stage, her vibrato quivering angrily and her sound with a slight sourness that suited her character. Her bass was meaty when she struck hard.
After an all-too-breathy overture, Rizzi, experienced and exuberant in the Met of the Italian repertoire, settled into a performance that addressed both the score’s savage drama and its aching emotion. Her chorus sings with her soothing clarity, and there’s a great cast around Radvanovsky who uses her Medea to help steal the Golden Fleece, marry her, and give her and her children and dropped her.
Soprano Janai Brugger was sweet as Jasone’s new bride, Grouse. Bassist Michele Pertusi was as firmly paternity as her father, Cleonte. And as Medea’s attendant Nellis, mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova sang her big arias with her sisterly warmth, accompanied by the richly tonal solos of bassoonist Evan Epifanio.
This “Medea” is the twelfth McVicar—the twelfth! — from 1964 to his 1998 staged for the company in just over ten years, surpassing his 11th directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Indeed, it’s a thing of the past for The Metropolitan to give other directors a chance at him in endless slots.
“Medea” is gray, solemn and effective, one of his favorite aesthetic modes. The set (designed by McVicar and dimly lit by Paul Constable) is dominated by a crumbling brick wall of Corinth. When they slide open, a giant mirror looms diagonally over the playspace beyond, giving the audience a vivid and disorienting bird’s-eye view of the characters.
As is often the case with McVicar, we are in an ambiguous and placeless Europe. The opera may have been composed by him around the turn of the nineteenth century, or later. Some of the noisy, somersaulting sailors feel like refugees from summer stock. S. Katy Tucker’s projections are sometimes evocative (the ocean’s edge, billowing storm clouds) and sometimes not (the screensaver’s temple burning in flames).
Doey Lüthi dressed Radvanovsky in an Alexander McQueen-esque feather gown and matted his hair like a raven. (Did Medea swim all the way to Corinth?) With her wild eyes, dragging her ground like a mermaid on the beach, and stepping into her fellow singers and props, she certainly knows her ferocity. I’m telling you. But Radvanovsky and her conception of McVicar’s role can seem so desperate to get that effect that it undermines Medea’s stature, her authority beyond hysteria. (After all, she’s not just a magician, she’s also a princess.)
And McVicar interpolates a new final image: After pitting Giasone against the dead children, Medea seems to reconsider, weeping over the corpses before lying beside them to be engulfed in flames. made a gesture of regret.
This lowers rather than raises the emotional temperature. As written, the ending of the work is Medea’s triumph, not her tragedy. There are even things.
She’s a survivor and comes out stronger than ever before. However, McVicar and Radvanovsky are happy to make her another operatic victim.
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Until October 28th at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan. metopera.org.