Young Opera Queen: What are those black birds circling around over there?
Old Opera Queen: Those are vultures, my dear.
YOQ: What are they waiting for?
OOQ: Tonights broadcast of T & I, my dear.
YOQ: Why?
OOQ: So they can rip it to shreds, of course.
Willym on La Cieca ( a well-known opera blog site)
So. It finally came to pass. La Voigt and Ben Heppner got their bio-rhythms in synch in time for the final performance of this present production at the Met of The Cornish Opera. The management at the Met were so excited that they decided to stream the performance live through their web site (a first for them) and the opera world spent the day wondering whether this thing would finally and actually take place. Even though I had seen the performance simulcast with Voigt but sans Heppner just a matter of days before I decided that I really had to tune in and listen because...well, you just never know, right? It could turn out to be the performance of a lifetime or a disaster beyond imagining - and either way I wasn't going to miss it. I went to La Cieca to see what she was saying about it and in addition to the comment shown above I discovered she would preside over a chat room appropriately to be named Tintagel. This on-line venue would be open to all throughout the performance allowing participants to comment on the peformance in real time. Well this was just way too good an opportunity to miss so at he appointed time I was there at my computer with a ready and plentiful supply of beer at hand (wine seemed inappropriate somehow).
The actual performance was preceded by mainly inane chat from Margaret Juntwait and William Berger telling us how excited we should be and assuring us that as far as they knew all was well with our hero and heroine. Ah but wait....A guy in a suit comes from behind the curtain...It's the stage manager...gasps and groans from the audience...has this anticipation all been for naught? "Ladies and gentlemen. I have only good news!" Cheers and calls for doubles all round. "Both Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner are in good form" etc.etc. What's this - an announcement from the management that the people you paid to hear are actually going to front up and sing for you? Another first! Actually it turned out that there was a touch of irony in his "only good news" because he went on to say that Margaret Jane Wray (B Team) who had been scheduled to sing the role of Brangäne was indisposed and that the role would now be undertaken by Michelle de Young (A Team). I would just love to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. I suspect it went something like this:
Management Lackey: I expect you have heard that Debbie and Ben are both singing tonight. We're sorry to hear about your 'flu.
Margaret Jane Wray: 'Flu? I don't have 'flu! I'm fine! Never better!
ML: Ummm..nooo..you have 'flu. Fortunately Michelle is standing by and can go on.
MJW: #@$* you!
ML : Get better soon. Bye love!
(ML makes hasty exit. Flower vase is heard to smash against closing dressing room door).
The house lights dimmed, Maestro Levine took his place under center, the ref blew his whistle and we were off. The next five hours with the performance coming over my speakers and the running commentary from the chat room scrolling over my computer screen were an extraordinary experience for me on a number of levels. While I won't claim that it was a musical revelation I do have to admit that I think I may be starting to get this Wagner opera stuff. Not for a moment to the degree that nearly everyone else who was in the chat-room gets it but certainly in a "I-suspect-I've-been-missing-something-here" sort of way. It was an education. At any given time there were probably about a dozen participants in the chat and all of them showed an expertise and depth of knowledge that had me shaking my head in wonder and a bitchy sense of wit that on a number of occasions had me laughing out aloud. At the end of the long evening I felt I had been led by the hand (and not always gently) through an event in a way that left me much better informed. A true appreciation of that event requires much arcane knowledge that I still don't have of course but I no longer feel quite the dunce I did.
Here's what Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times thought of it. I don't feel about it quite as he did. I think that may have something to do with the difference inherent in being present at a performance and listening to it undistracted by all the visual stuff - not to mention the frisson attached to the event. Anyway here's a summary of what I and my co-vultures (C-Vs) made of it. Comments in quotation marks are from the chat room.
The orchestra was by unanimous acclaim wonderful "So much better than the New York Philharmonic!". I never thought I would hear that said about an opera pit band but on the strength of what I have been hearing from them for the last couple of years I'd be hard-pressed to dispute this. In particular, though really it is not doing justice to the rest of the orchestra to single out one player...so sue me...I recall with great pleasure the stunning rendition of the cor anglais solo in the Prelude to Act III. I do not recall evah hearing such a gorgeous sound from that instrument ("I can hear Kenny G doing this! Wagner For a Rainy Day - Do it Kenny!") Levine as always brought forth the most wonderful sound from his entire orchestra. His tempi though were very slow. It seemed like it took him forever to get to the Tristan Chord in the Prelude to Act I - and that's the fourth note! The C-Vs got pretty hot under the collar about this right from the get-go, their comments ranging from the historical: "A bad Furtwängler imitation!" to the intellectual: "He does seem to equate extreme schlepping with profundity". At one point quite early on in Act I the comment "It's gonna be a loooong night" was met with "It already is!"
Q: What's 77 minutes long? A: The movies Deuce Bigelo and Adrenalin: Fear the Rush or ACT I of this performance at the Met! But Wagner fans are nothing if not long-suffering.
The role of Tristan is as taxing as they come and it is very important that the tenor pace himself in order to last the whole piece. Having said that it seemed to me that Heppner was not in great voice. At times he sung with passion, it is true, but he was consistently flat and suffered from "a wobble you could drive a truck through!" Though his love duet in Act II was fair enough I felt that It was not until Act III that he really hit his stride and showed why he is the leading Wagnerian tenor of the day. Voigt also had intonation issues and seemed to catch Heppner's wobble as the performance progressed. She too got better as she went along though and I found the Liebestod very moving. She seemed to have a few memory problems ("The prompter's in good voice tonight!") but,hey, it's a "long song" as she herself put it. And let the record show that when she took one of her curtain calls she bent down to the prompt box and shook hands with the prompter. I thought that was a delightful display of class - and another first? Both Michelle de Young and Matti Salminen were as fine as I remembered them from the simulcast.
The intermissions were a complete mess and the C-Vs obviously missed the presence of the knowledgeable Ira Siff ("Oh, Ira...where are you?"). William Berger talked such unintelligible nonsense that one C-V opined "I see Grey Goose sponsored the first intermission!" And Ms Juntwait just doesn't possess the intellectual heft this gig calls for.
The show didn't finish till well after midnight New York time ("The boys are on overtime!") and I was left feeling quite elated and somewhat drained.
And who deserves the accolade for biggest star of this production? For my money it would be Peter Gelb the Met's General Manager. There seems to be a general feeling among the cognoscenti that he should let someone else take care of casting the operas to be produced under his aegis. What it is hard to fault though is his sense of showmanship and marketing savvy. Let's face it this last couple of weeks could have been an unmitigated disaster. Instead of which he had the world's press reporting on a daily basis on what was going on at Lincoln Center all leading up to Friday's final will-they-won't-they moments when the two weeks of dubious foreplay were consummated to most everyone's satisfaction if not all together unqualified delight. Opera has become culturally relevant again in the sense that people other than hardcore opera fans are looking up from their coffee and newspaper and saying "See what the Met's doing now?" It's still not exactly water-cooler chat but it's come a long way very quickly.
I had a good time. Wagner twice in a week. Gosh. I've been listening to lots of Mozart to freshen my mind up.
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