Time for the first in this opera season's of occasional mash-up diaries between SNLC and the series on the Metropolitan Opera's HD moviecasts begun by DK'er Demi Moaned some time back. Thus, the standard opener for today's installment goes:
Anyone see the Met HD-cast of Il Trovatore today?
The interest in this particular HD-cast goes beyond the opera itself, or this particular production. It has to do with one particular singer, for at least part of the run, namely the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who sang the role of the Count di Luna for the first 3 performances, the HD-cast being the 3rd. Earlier this year, Hvorostovsky was diagnosed with a brain tumor, such as noted here by WQXR. He pulled out of all his scheduled summer engagements at the time to begin treatment. He had also been scheduled, years in advance (that's how opera-land and classical music-land works), to sing the Count di Luna in this production, so it would have been quite understandable if he had pulled out of the Met's Trovatore as well. Yet his doctors apparently gave him the go-ahead to sing part of the run. More below the flip....
First, though, as is standard with 3CM's practice in this mash-up series, he starts with linky goodness to the Met's synopsis of the opera, so you can get up to speed on the plot (major spoiler at the end, of course), although you can also keep in mind a mildly snarky quote about this opera, attributed to Enrico Caruso, to the effect that "All you need for Il Trovatore is the four greatest singers in the world". As well, again per 3CM's usual (loserly) practice, some review links, c/o the usual suspects:
(a) Anthony Tommasini, NYT
(b) Martin Bernheimer, Financial Times
Per Bernheimer's review, the production's director, Sir David McVicar, updated the costumes to roughly the time of the Napoleonic wars, which works OK, IMHO, and doesn't get in the way of the story or seem out of place. To be honest, self wasn't terribly interested initially, when the schedule was announced months ago, in going to see this HD-cast of Il Trovatore. There were several reasons, of varying degrees of validity (or its opposite):
1. It's the 2nd HD-cast for the McVicar production already (i.e. "repeat-itis" by the Met in their HD's, now going into their 10th season - same situation later this season with Turandot)
2. The conductor, Marco Armiliato, is an HD-regular, and a bit of a routinier conductor. He doesn't get in the way generally, but equally generally, offers no deep insights, in my experience of seeing him in the HD-casts. (However, not getting in the way is its own kind of back-handed virtue.)
3. The cast generally didn't draw me in just from seeing the names, which is admittedly more than a bit unfair to relative newbie Yonghoon Lee (from South Korea, as you can tell by the name) as Manrico, the troubadour of the title.
However, what decided me was the human interest factor, i.e. the Hvorostovsky factor. The same can probably be said for the Met audience here in general, because the 3 performances with Hvorostovsky came pretty close to selling out, probably the first sell-outs or near sellouts at the Met in a while. It's kind of sad that it takes a situation like this to lead to a sell-out at the opera, at the risk of sounding slightly distastefully cynical. Yet the situation is understandable, because the non-cynical flip side of the situation is that the audience and his fellow artists are completely rooting for Hvorostovsky, and want him to overcome this brain tumor, as he himself undoubtedly does, of course.
This was evident at the first night, where, as Bernheimer noted at Hvorostovsky's first appearance on stage as the Count di Luna:
"When he made his entrance, the house erupted. Even the conductor applauded. The baritone beamed, clutched his heart and took a bow."
At today's HD-cast, DH's first entrance drew very warm applause, slightly prolonged, my guess as not quite up to the extent of the first night. But it was enough for the cameras to catch DH trying not to break out into a smile as the applause continued. He did seem to take a quick bow in a long shot, before jumping back into the drama. The audience saved the big applause for him (before the curtain call, that is) for after his major aria in Act II. To his credit, at least IMHO, DH made no attempt to milk the situation for sympathy. Nor did he need to, as Tommasini noted in his review:
"Mr. Hvorostovsky gave a gripping performance as Count di Luna. There was little need to take what he has been going through into account. His resplendent voice, with its distinctive mellow character and dusky veneer, sounded not at all compromised."
I generally agree with that assessment, even given my very limited experience of hearing DH either live or Memorex, as he certainly sounded strong in voice, and generally acted well. At the intermission, the HD-cast host, Susan Graham, was wise enough to keep it simple with DH, to let him send a shout-out to his parents in Moscow, his family in London, and to his fans generally, i.e. no questions about the story or his character, or even about medical details (which would have seemed tacky to discuss in detail anyway).
Graham then moved on to some banter with Dolora Zajick (Azucena) and Yonghoon Lee. In an earlier HD-cast of Aida some years back, Zajick looked rather uncomfortable doing the intermission banter with Renee Fleming. This time, though, with Graham, DZ seemed a lot more at ease, or much less ill at ease, though perhaps not completely the smoothest of interviewees. Graham lightened things up for DZ with some (presumably well-planned) light-hearted comments, which seemed to work, but also warmly noted that it had been 25 years since DZ first sang Azucena at the Met, with Pavarotti as Manrico, no less. Lee didn't say anything terribly insightful for his questions, but then it must be noted that English is obviously not his first language, and Graham was presumably trying to keep it simple.
The last of the leads to be interviewed was Anna Netrebko, the Leonora of this production. She has apparently notched up the most lead appearances over the years of the Met HD-series, and there was a clip fest of her various HD-roles. She remains popular in NYC and with opera audiences, any concerns about her being a "Putin poodle" aside. To add to the random element quotient of this portion of the intermission, AN's son was also on camera, behaving as you might expect a kid to behave, not quite remembering that he's on camera, which is catching him running around and sort of disrupting his mom, who's trying to do her PR-duty there. Afterwards, Graham got in a really quick one-liner phrase that got a laugh from the HD-audience here: "Dogs and kids."
It can tricky to keep all the back-story of the plot of Il Trovatore straight, and in fact, DZ mentioned that apparently some restaurant in Italy will give you a free bottle of wine if you can actually explain the opera's plot without getting totally confused. But for the most part, the theme is more or less that "revenge is a dish best served cold". At one point, the Count di Luna even says that the only god or deity that he recognizes is vengeance, since nominally he wants to find the woman who threw his baby brother to his death in a fire way before the opera has begun. (Little does the count know.)
Overall, the main human interest element aside, this was a good, solid performance, certainly not the greatest opera performance ever, but a generally satisfying start to this HD-cast season. This would have been a perfectly fine launch for this HD-season without external considerations. However, it is precisely that main external consideration which gave this performance an extra level of meaning.
From the audience side, when DH first took his curtain call, the HD-cameras caught the audience collectively rising to its feet for a standing ovation. Normally, unfortunately in concert halls these days, the standing ovation has become so devaluated at performances, kind of like giving all the kids in the class A's. However, this was the one occasion where it was merited. You can also read about, and in the case of the second link, see evidence of audience warmth and support from these other bits of linky goodness:
(a) Zachary Woolfe, ArtsBeat blog, NYT
(b) WQXR OperaVore blog (with embedded YT video of the curtain call)
From the first night, you can read from all the posts, and see in the video, the gesture right after the conductor yanked Hvorostovsky forward to the front of the stage:
"Three hours later, at his curtain call, the orchestra showered him with white roses."
The same thing happened again today, with the slight twist that Armiliato gently pushed DH forward from behind to the front of the stage. But the barrage of white roses arrived from the orchestra pit on cue, as before. It's not hard to imagine that this also happened on the 2nd night of the production (would be interesting to hear from anyone who was there). At least one full bouquet of flowers made its way from the house (not the orchestra pit) to the stage, as did several Asian-type gift bags. One older lady in a Korean robe was visible in the front row of the house.
After the curtain came down, the camera lingered back stage, to catch the artists hugging each other, particularly DH getting a lot of love from his colleagues. While some banter in Russian was going on between AN and someone else, and with chorus director Donald Palumbo also visible briefly, the camera kept DH in the center of the frame, even when others obscured him from full view. The camera faded with him in the center of the frame to end the transmission. Certainly from this writer, best wishes to DH for good health and safe tumor therapy, to knock out that tumor.
Oh, one brief post-script: the movie house staff warned us today that the Metropolitan Opera, in turn, had warned them that because of Hurricane Joaquin and its potential side-effects, it was possible that the extreme weather might disrupt today's HD-cast. Fortunately, the only effect was a momentary sound dropout as the main Met title credits started, and a blip at the start of the intermission. (There was also a mildly comical flash of something like a dozen lines of surtitles too quickly at one point.) Hopefully NYC and the East Coast won't get nailed too badly by Hurricane Joaquin and its weather sidebars.
With that, you can either:
1. Talk about the opera and the HD-cast today, or
2. Observe the standard SNLC protocol.
Or there's the option to do both, of course, since they're not mutually exclusive actions ;) .