In opera, the 1950s and ’60s saw a search for the means by which traditional rhetorics of vocal and musical expression could somehow be reconciled with the modern acting sensibility—in other words, with what had by then come to seem truthful and lifelike in stage behavior. That search, which I recount in the Acting chapter of Opera as Opera, was the reform, the advance, that held promise for keeping the established repertory alive for audiences of the postwar generation, though the revisionist conceptualizations and auteurisms of Regietheater were already beginning to stir in Germany and Austria. Zeffirelli’s grounding in Neorealism made him a part of that quest, while his native-born feel for Italian lyricism and tradition and his sensualism set him somewhat apart from the Crusades for Truth of Walter Felsenstein in East Berlin or Frank Corsaro and other Methodists in America. In Zeffirelli’s inner debate between realism and spectacle, I kept hoping that the realism, in the form of his work with actors and singers and his fresh thinking about the events of scenes, would win out, with his designer persona providing the visual tone for which he had a keen eye and a Mediterranean sense of atmosphere. And I was encouraged in that hope by my first exposures to Zeffirelli’s work—his Old Vic production of Romeo and Juliet of 1962, which played the New York City Center early the next year, and his first Metropolitan Opera venture, the Falstaff of 1963. I cannot pretend to a detailed recollection of the Romeo, but I do recall a pulse to the action, as in a realistic evocation of Veronese street life and of the dueling families, and the mood of several vividly colored, strikingly lit vistas. I also remember that I thought this was fresher, more immediate, than any Shakespeare I’d yet seen, and that I felt relatively disappointed by the movie upon its release. The Falstaff is much sharper in memory, since I saw it several times in its early seasons, and it returned periodically for many more, though to progressively less effect. As originally cast and conducted (by Leonard Bernstein), I still count it as one of the three, or at most four, most complete realizations of a great work the company has offered in my operagoing lifetime. Every scene had visual allure and played with wit and ease; familiar performers worked at their highest level.

In 1965, I saw further encouraging signs from F. Z., though they admittedly required some inference. In March, Maria Callas returned to the Met for what turned out to be her final two performances there, as Tosca. I had seen her in this part eight years earlier, in her first Metropolitan stint. Then, while she was certainly a riveting presence and in a league of her own as a vocal actress, her physical characterization was simply a superior rendering of what we might call the traditional interpretation. Now, however, though the voice was barely (and not always) holding together, she was transformed as an actress—far more released and spirited, more girlish and vulnerable, emotionally on hair-trigger. It was a performance that kept me on hair-trigger, too, in both the good and bad senses (1: “this is spellbinding!”, 2) “is she going to get through this next scene/phrase/note?”). Perhaps the difference was due in part simply to several more years of thinking and experiencing the role. But I was pretty sure (and still am) that much of it was in her work with Zeffirelli for the Covent Garden production of a year earlier. He said that he’d waited to do the opera until he could do it with her, and the performance bore all the marks of inspired collaboration. (I should note that in both her earlier and later Met Toscas, Callas was entering repertory revivals of standing productions, and had all she could do to maintain what she brought in. Fresh directorial inspiration was not part of the deal.)