There’s not much more to say about this limp, featureless, four-and-a-quarter hours of our lives, except to wonder: were these people making their predominantly pale impressions on their own, or were we sampling supremely futile efforts at enhancement?
˜ ˜ ˜
In my Wednesday blog announcement, I said I’d explain why I chose to write about a news-unworthy repertory revival of Trittico rather than the spanking-new production of La Traviata, which opened the night before (several readers had already asked, one or two with a dereliction-of-duty undertone). The question doesn’t merit much space, but quickly: 1) I’d seen Diana Damrau make her way of late through Gounod’s Juliette and Bizet’s Leïla, in both instances pecking and flopping about the music in the early going, then making partial recovery in the less florid writing later on, and wasn’t eager to hear the pattern repeated in Violetta’s music. 2) While I had some interest in learning whether or not Juan Diego Flórez can fill out a role like Alfredo, when I read that the evening’s conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, was urging him to sing the Brindisi more softly, I thought “No, no! You might ask any number of Alfredos (Richard Tucker, the younger Plácido, et al.) to sing it more softly, but not a voice like Flórez’s!” And since this nugget of poor advice was in line with some problems I was already having with aspects of N-S’s conducting, it further dampened the prospects for me. 3) I’d written recently about Traviata after evading the recently deceased Will Decker production for years, and have plenty of time to catch up with this one (not this Spring, though—Plácido as “baritone” again). 4) Attention to ordinary repertory revivals must be paid. They make up the majority of a given season’s performances, and cumulatively, I would guess, have more effect on audience interest than the nominal special occasions.
˜ ˜ ˜
NEXT TIME: Since the usual biweekly schedule would land me in the Christmas-to-New Year’s week, when I’ll be decompressing for a few days, the next post will go up on Friday, January 4, 2019. Unless something shocking intervenes, my subject then will be Faust, an opera that is neither in the current repertory nor projected for any early return, but has in fact been missing in action for decades, whether in the repertory or not. I’ll do a bit of Then-and-Now, as I’ve done with La Forza del destino and Don Giovanni.
# # #