Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; December 21st & 22nd, 2011
With almost entirely new casts and conductors in each opera, it was time to re-visit two of the Met’s recent, fascinating productions – Hansel and Gretel, from 2007, and Madama Butterfly, from 2006.
The Hansel remains a dark, neurotic view: Hunger is the theme in this modern-dress production designed by John Macfarlane and directed by Richard Jones. The first scene takes place in the family’s plain, claustrophobic kitchen; the “forest” is a great, gloomy dining room with every inch of wall and ceiling covered in dark, leafy wallpaper, featuring men in suits with tree branches for necks and heads. The fourteen angels are fourteen fat little chefs in grotesque rubber masks, and the witch’s cottage is a kitchen that looks more like an abattoir. The Witch’s ride is a manic, insane cooking demonstration. At the opera’s close, Hansel, Gretel, Dad, Mom and the flock of de-gingerbreaded children feast on the cooked body of the witch. It’s scary and menacing, and enormously effective. The children in the audience had no trouble with the grotesquerie; they probably see worse on television.
Aleksandra Kurzak and Kate Lindsey are the Gretel and Hansel, respectively, and they both look and act the parts to perfection: jumpy, loving, scared, gorging themselves, triumphant. Their singing was sensational, Kurzak’s slightly accented English notwithstanding (she is Polish), and they sounded wonderful together. Dwayne Croft was a mellifluous, sympathetic father; Michaela Martens a complex, tired-looking mother. Jennifer Johnson Cano’s Sandman – here an old, cranky, misshapen man – was as elegantly sung as Ashley Emerson’s Dew Fairy, dressed as a maid, with wings, who arrived to clean up after the children’s dream in the dining room. Robert Brubaker, a tenor Witch (a piece of acceptably perverse casting I do not particularly like: a woman’s voice, as indicated by the composer, is needed to cut through the heavy orchestration), camped it up in matronly fat suit and pearls.
Twenty-nine-year-old Robin Ticciati, in his Met debut season, led a stunning, grandly scaled performance, acutely aware of the Wagnerian influences but also unafraid of the score’s lovely, sentimental melodies. The Met Orchestra sounded happy to have him in the pit.
The late film director Anthony Minghella’s production of Madama Butterfly remains one of the jewels in Peter Gelb’s crown. Ravishing to look at, with a tilted mirrored ceiling doubling the staggeringly beautiful costumes by Han Feng, Michael Levine’s lean, lovely settings, and the graceful movements of Carolyn Choa (Mr Minghella’s widow, who has minimized the characters’ movements for this revival), the production amazes the eye. Peter Mumford’s dramatic lighting, some of it from (visible) moving spots on the insides of the stage, is part of the production’s success.
The controversial use of a puppet to portray Butterfly’s child seems now to be of no controversy whatsoever: almost invisibly manipulated by three members of a troupe called the Blind Summit Theatre, the little boy reacts so touchingly to the events around him that he seems genuinely loving, frightened, tired, puzzled. Any momentary shock wears off at once.
Soprano Liping Zhang’s voice may be a bit small for the brutally taxing title role, but the sound is lovely at all registers, and she is a canny enough singer to know when to pull out the stops. Her tiny movements ideally suited the character, making her physical outbursts even more effective. She communicates with grace and sincerity. Robert Dean Smith, better known as a Wagnerian tenor, sang a fine Pinkerton, but his stiff stage presence hampered his portrayal, particularly in the first act. Luca Salsi’s Sharpless was excellent both vocally and dramatically; his impatience and anger with Pinkerton was always clear, as was his sympathy with Butterfly. Maria Zifchak, the only holdover from the previous revival, remains a marvelously all-knowing Suzuki, with plenty of voice. The remainder of the cast was on a very high level. Yves Abel led a languorous reading – at times a bit too much so – but the overall effect was what it should be.
Robert Levine
