“Florencia” and the “New Opera Problem” Redux

But that does not happen, at least in appreciable measure. I don’t mind that the idiom is “old-fashioned,” only that there is so little inspiration in it. And I don’t much care that it’s derivative—Verdi took plenty from Donizetti, Wagner from Weber, etc. Derivative of what, though? Puccini has more than once been invoked (as he always is, for anything “lush” and not atonal), but that’s ridiculous. Puccini invented a seemingly endless succession of memorable, long-form melodies, through and around which he wove an interplay of equally sticky motivic elements and harmonic/orchestral colorations that almost invariably capture their moments. At times Catán sounds to be working somewhat along those lines, but without the memorable melodies and sticky motives. Advanced craft is there, certainly, but that’s about all, and since the language is immediately accessible, we don’t even have anything to work on.

The production of Florencia was entrusted to Mary Zimmerman, with a set by Riccardo Hernandez and other design elements by Ana Kuzmanic (costumes), T. J. Gerkens (lights), Alex Sanchez (choreography), and S. Katy Tucker (projections). Among them, they created an environment of inventive fluidity, and while the amusing costume contrivances for divers creatures of air and water sometimes made me feel I was watching an unconscionably expensive children’s theatre show, it was a relief, after the unrelieved gloom of a succession of recent productions, to see splashes of color on the Met’s stage. A translation of Fuentes-Berain’s text was projected onto the the not-too-receptive surfaces of the set. I don’t like that, since it goes a step beyond the subliterary distraction of seatside surtitles to actually enfold the stage world in text—the ultimate academic intrusion on our sensory experience. Nor did I care for the crosscultural Bunraku manipulations of the choreographed stagehands charged with the onboard scene changes. Still, had someone asked me “Well, what would you do with this thing?” I imagine that, after a moment’s pause to wonder how a more naturalistic staging might have worked, I’d have jerked a thumb in the direction of Team Zimmerman’s fantasy and mumbled “Something like that, I guess.”

The only passages of vocal eloquence in Florencia belong to Florencia, in three inner-directed monologues, culminating in her final scene of transfiguration (she sprouts butterfly wings, presumably those of the rare specimen). If we’re in search of influences, we would peg these as AustroGerman derivations, in the Strauss/Korngold mode of soprano writing—long, arching, high-lying phrases, dependent for their effect on an instrumental handling of the line and superior control of the dynamics. They are gracefully written, and Ailyn Pérez sang them beautifully, repeatedly drawing out lovely swell-and-diminish moments from a well-intoned legato. Soprano Gabriella Reyes and mezzo Nancy Fabiola Herrera also did well with the parts of the researching journalist and the dissatisfied wife, respectively. Among the men, we had two sturdy veteran baritones (Michael Chioldi and Greer Grimsley); a lighter baritone newcomer, Mattia Olivieri, who effected a few nice upper-range diminuendi; and a young tenor, Mario Chang (Arturo in the Simon Stone Lucia), who has a clear high range atop a rather baritonal middle. These are all listenable, efficient voices of no great span; that they registered as okay but generic is at least partly because their writing was okay but generic. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted, and it all sounded more or less as I think it was intended to sound. The attendance at this performance (Dec. 5) was good and, sure enough, boasted a higher-than-normal proportion of Latino persons. The silo theory may be paying off, economically and in the short run, if not artistically and over the longer term.