Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; January 14, 2013—The Met’s production of La Rondine, Puccini’s least successful mature opera, has returned. The 2008 production starred The Couple: Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. The singing was delicious, but somehow the balance was off-kilter with the plot and feel of the work, and in retrospect it was Gheorghiu’s performance: she played the courtesan Magda as if she were Tosca, a diva. With the house debut of Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais, the balance has been restored and the show is quite a success.
Opolais is a charmer; tall, blond, and pretty, she is a natural actress without exaggerations. The voice is a lovely, full lyric (I recently listened to a CD of her singing Suor Angelica, beautifully). Her big first-act aria, indeed the opera’s only hit, is the very difficult “Che il bel sogno di Doretta”, which, while not erasing memories of Leontyne Price’s recording, was lovely, with easy ascent to the gentle high-C. Throughout the evening she was playful, loving, and rueful by turns—a normal human being with myriad feelings. What a lovely performance! As Ruggero, the young lover she gives up (in a very “Traviata” sort of way), Giuseppe Filanoti was equally charming. Slim, well-tailored, and looking properly love-struck and naïve, Filanoti displayed an appealing voice, save for an issue or two above the staff, and he and Opolais sang their last-act duet with great feeling and beauty. The sentimentality in Puccini’s score paid off well with these two leads.
Marius Brenciu and Anna Christy play the second, somewhat comic couple—he a fortune-telling philosopher/poet, she a ladies’ maid who borrows one of Magda’s dresses (in a very “Fledermaus” sort of way). Brenciu’s voice is a well-focused if light instrument, and he has great style; Christy sings with the proper insouciance. Dwayne Croft, as Magda’s older lover, Rambaldo, is a dignified, strong presence in his few scenes.
The production by Nicholas Joel has the opera updated to the 1920s, allowing for stunning art deco/nouveau, MGM musical sets in brilliant colors by Ezio Frigerio. There’s nary a false move in Stephen Barlow’s staging (Joel is recovering from an illness and did not direct this revival). If there was anything off about the evening, it was La Rondine itself—an odd hybrid, filled with much sentimental music with interesting harmonies to place it in the 20th century, attempts at lightness that sometimes just take up time, and a plot that seems to be a retread. But for “Che il sogno…”, the second-act quartet, and the last act’s sad, love duet, particularly performed by such a fine cast, it is more than worth it.
