I went to the Met Opera yesterday afternoon. my first visit to that venue in 2017, to hear the great tenor turned baritone Plácido Domingo take the title role in the early Verdi opera Nabucco. The performance, which lasted roughly three hours, was conducted by the Met's Music Director Emeritus James Levine.
Nabucco is one of the most significant works in the history of Italian opera. The third composed by Verdi, who at the time was only 28, it marked the end of the bel canto era and the beginning of a new period in which the importance of dramatic action was to prevail over the beauty of individual arias. And it almost wasn't written. Before beginning work on it, Verdi had vowed to give up composing after the untimely deaths of his wife Margherita and their two infant children. It's true that at this point his career had not really taken off and he had reason to be pessimistic. His first opera, Oberto, had had only moderate success and his second, Un giorno di regno, had been a dismal failure. When he began work on Nabucco, it was only because he had become, almost against his will, totally captivated by the libretto by Temistocle Solera with whom he had collaborated on Oberto. The libretto had already been rejected by the composer Otto Nicolai, who later became a bitter critic after having learned of the opera's smashing success, but Verdi saw in it an opportunity to stage a musical drama on a grand scale. This was a work whose powerful sweep was worthy of Verdi's music and it provided him the vehicle that first allowed his genius to fully show itself. The work was an instant hit when it opened at La Scala in 1842 and became the base on which Verdi built his reputation. It's interesting to speculate what might have become of Verdi's career if he had not been offered this particular libretto at precisely the right moment.
What surprised me most as I listened to the opera was how much of the mature Verdi was already present in this early work. This is particularly true of his use of the chorus. As in Greek tragedy, the composer employed the chorus to heighten his operas' dramatic intensity. And it is this intensity of feeling, this passion, that truly separates Verdi's work from the bel canto period that had flourished before him. Audiences at performances of his early work must have been stunned by the tempestuous display he unleashed onstage. Italians themselves are a highly emotional people - one could never accuse them of being stolid or phlegmatic - and in Nabucco surely they heard a reflection of their own mercurial nature.
The performance itself was brilliant. Levine has always been an excellent interpreter of Verdi, and yesterday afternoon was no exception. He got everything possible from both musicians and singers without himself getting in the way of Verdi's music. And he had an excellent cast to work with. Liudmyla Monastyrska as Abigaille, Jamie Barton as Fenena, and Dmitri Belosselskiy as Zaccariam all gave top notch performances. Even so, Plácido Domingo stole the show every time he appeared onstage. One only wished that Verdi had written more arias for his part. The real star, though, was the superb Met chorus. The high point of the entire opera was their rendition of Va, pensiero which truly deserved the encore it was given.
The handsome 2001 Elijah Moshinsky production has worn well. With the sets placed on a revolving stage, there was never any unnecessary break in the action. Instead, events moved smoothly forward to their climax.
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