Performances of two canonical mainstays, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Bizet’s Carmen, marked the closing weeks of the Metropolitan’s 2023-24 season. The Butterfly was a revival of the 2006-07 production that initiated Peter Gelb’s tenure as the company’s General Director. Anthony Minghella is given original “production by” billing, with sets designed by Michael Levine. Carolyn Choa is succeeded by Paula Williams as director and choreographer, and the conductor is Xian Zhang, in her debut assignment. Carmen is a new production directed by Carrie Cracknell, an English theatre director, again with Michael Levine as designer, and with Diego Matheuz conducting (also a company debut).
Most of the advance interest (including mine) in the return of Butterfly was in the assumption of the title role by Asmik Grigorian. This Lithuanian soprano has established herself with major roles (Salome, Lady Macbeth, Turandot, in addition to Cio-Cio-San) in some of the major European houses (the Bolshoi, the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, etc.). She carries the opera gene: her mother sang leading roles in Baltic houses, and her father, Gegam, is remembered from his performances and recordings for the Mariinsky. She is an interesting artist, who gave a poised, insightful performance of distinct profile in this revival of a stylistically queasy production. She abjured most of the text-and-tradition invitations to Asian mimicry that used to be de rigueur in favor of playing the woman, and I found her physical acting consistently absorbing once we were past Act 1. I am sure it registered tellingly on the broadcast video.
The voice, though, is of modest size and restricted span. It is attractive and steady, albeit pale in timbre, in its upper octave, but has no grounding at the bottom and not much body in the midrange. There is plenty of precedent for voices of lyric, or even lyric-coloratura, format in this part—it isn’t necessary to have the engulfing lirico spinto of Tebaldi or the penetrating dramatic soprano of Destinn to succeed in it, and indeed many of its most affecting moments are “small” moments. But they need to be conveyed by a voice with solidity in the lower and middle ranges and/or the technique and imagination to use peculiarly Italian registral blends to make peculiarly Italian inflectional points. Grigorian has neither such solidity nor such technique, so whether or not she has the imagination is moot, and for all her compelling work as an actress for the eye, there is very little, interpretively speaking, for the ear, apart from her efforts with dynamic shadings. Even those, while sensitively guided, are limited in their effect because she has so little wiggle room to play with. And there are things I simply don’t understand. Here is an obviously gifted woman, musical and dramatically intelligent, from an operatic family; yet either her training included no development of the lower register in her voice, or for some perverse reason she’s decided to ignore it. (I will give long odds that it was the former.) Then, once launched, she’s tackled some of the biggest roles of the repertoire short of true Heldensopran, and has been hired by world-class companies to sing them. I’ve seen a few clips of her Lady Macbeth and Turandot. Those roles are preposterous for her, however lovingly the camera receives her.