And by this standard, which is high, but certainly a fair measure for a singer who has established herself as the leading one of her sort at the Metropolitan Opera, how does the Dalila of Rachvelishvili compare? Close enough, I’d say, to make the shortfall frustrating. After waiting out Garanca in favor of Rachvelishvili, I was deflated to hear the latter singing the first act as I would have expected from the former, but to less effect. Here I should pause briefly to make a statement about this act. Everyone complains about its lack of action. The Mendelssohnian choruses are generally blamed, and perhaps the first one is a tad long. But gosh, they’re rather beautiful, and they have some wonderful effects, like the women’s voices pealing in at “Ah, le souffle du Seigneur à passé dans son âme” as the Hebrews start to respond to Samson’s harangues. There’s ample action between them and him to carry this sequence (definition of operatic action: strong character intention, individual or group, conveyed primarily through the voice, along with whatever physical behavior is appropriate to the situation). Then there follow the confrontations with Abimélech and the High Priest, which, if effectively staged, have plenty of action by any definition. But then, following the brief “Hymne de joie” chorus, we get the trio. And here, for me, is where the act really bogs down. If we have Homer, Caruso, and Journet, that helps. But we don’t. Dramaturgically, this seems like a terrible way to introduce our anti-heroine, and a clumsy way to set up the opposition between Dalila and the Old Hebrew. They make their cases aloud to Samson, but his lines are sung à part—to himself—and so the action is frozen. And the music grinds along like something the composer had written in his youth to satisfy some academic or competition requirement, then pulled out of the drawer. So the singers must truly dominate here, and their physical selves convincingly convey the tension of the moment, without a lot to work with.

Instead of establishing herself vocally and, perhaps, putting a charge into this number, Rachelishvili picked her way through with what she may have intended as artistic restraint, as if she were the one singing à part. Or, I thought, perhaps she held back out of consideration for Antonenko, who was barely surviving on a one-painful-note-at-a time basis. “Surely Printemps will commence,” I speculated, and she will sing. No such luck. Some readers may recall my noting a fil di voce type of pianissimo that Rachvelishvili occasionally employed effectively (as on her re-entry with “Ah, ai nostri monti” in the last-scene trio) as Azucena. (See “An Uptick for Verdi,” 5/11/18.) It’s an unusual way for an operatic mezzo to sing softly, lacking any body or color but clear and distant, and haunting in special situations like the one just cited. But now, by way of lure to her onetime lover and, we would hope, of letting us in on it, she sang her whole aria with it!—this lush, erotic, low-to-mid-voice piece, with all its smoky register-transition possibilities! The act, foundering for most of its length, sank with nary a ripple left on the surface. In the house, glumness reigned.