I wonder how many readers’ eyes will light up on mention of Russell Baker. He was the longtime author of The Observer, a regular feature of the New York Times’ op-ed page, purveying a type of humor that, save for an occasional foray by Calvin Trillin, we don’t have much of anymore—keen-eyed and pointed, but always urbane and genial. The Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Don Carlos, sung in French for the first time in the company’s history, put me in mind of one of his most fondly-remembered pieces, whose title I had recalled as Are You Macho or Quiche-o?, but which the NYT archive has down as The Two Ismo’s. Picking up on a little essay by Philip Lopate, Quiche Blitz on Columbus Avenue, Baker writes of “two violently opposed doctrines of social conduct” that are rending the “urban war zone” whose nexus lies directly before the Met itself. He compiles an impressive collection of distinctions, amusing because they were dead-on at the time, between the styles of the eponymous factions. I could sample them here, but far better that I send you to the source, here.
The conductor of the new production is Yannick Nézet-Séguin. It isn’t the first time we’ve heard his way with this score. When he led the Nicholas Hytner production (in Italian), some years before his ascent to the Musical Directorship, I wrote of both production and conducting that “they seemed concerned with making a weighty, deep, long work seem less weighty, deep, and long” (see Opera as Opera, p. 648). That is even more the case now. The maestro has found a cast to help him lift further off the weighty and deep parts, though not by any means to lessen the long. And since the cast is what ultimately decides the fate of a performance (and, in this instance, clamps an apparently welcome damper on the presence of N-S’s orchestra), I’ll start there.
The Cast: To pacify in advance any devotees who might be looking on Matthew Polenzani as an eccentric selection for the title role, the NYT hastened to assure us that we wouldn’t be hearing anything so obstreperous as a Corelli- or Del Monaco-like voice. Something subtler, more nuanced, more French would soothe our sensibilities. What this meant became apparent immediately in Polenzani’s voicing of “Je l’ai vue” (“Io la vidi” to you, and I shall continue to translate for recognition’s sake), which, given a tolerance for a mannered approach, could have served nicely in one of Fauré’s purely lyrical songs in a comfortable recital venue with a discreet accompanist. The ridiculous Polenzani vs. Corelli/Del Monaco straw-man setup aside (Del Monaco, I’m fairly certain, never sang the part, and it was not one of Corelli’s best, though of course there were moments that tingled with the visceral excitement of his voice and benefited from his handsome, standup presence), there is an almost horizonless expanse between these extremes. It has been occupied at the Met by a long succession of tenors, beginning with Giovanni Martinelli back in the 1920s, continuing with Jussi Bjoerling in the 1950 production that launched the Bing regime, and coming on down to Roberto Alagna, who sang it there in 2010 and is the Carlos of the 1995 EMI French-language recording from the Théâtre du Chatelet. For my money, Neil Shicoff demonstrated with his Eléazar (La Juive) that a relatively slender but well-supported and equalized voice, combined with an intense acting talent, can make for a satisfying grand opéra tenor hero, particularly of this troubled sort.