There could be more, but that’s enough. I used to feel sorry for serious performers caught in schizoidal circumstances like these. No more. In their failure to recognize what they’re aiding and abetting and/or their absence of any willingness to try to do something about it, their normally admirable commitment to the artistic task has become a significant part of our problem. First among them this time was the Salome, Elza van den Heever. I think she is a good artist, and have written positively about her as Marie in Wozzeck and Elizabeth in Tannhäuser. She worked away diligently, and acted her assignment as given intelligently. Her voice sails out nicely at the top, has difficulty penetrating in the middle, and is virtually absent at the bottom. Overall, its format is not sufficient for the role. Peter Mattei, another good artist, is on the light side for a Don Giovanni and over the light side for a Rodrigo, to say nothing of a Wotan or Holländer. But he sang with steady tone of good quality, and as always applied himself with energy and point to the dramatic requirements. He was the most successful of the principals. The Herod was Gerhard Siegel, my only previous experience of whom was as the Siegfried Mime, for which his voice was strong, even at moments Helden-ish, though beyond singing the notes and words clearly, there was not much in the way of vocal characterization, as if he were trying take the dwarfish element out of the part. As Herod, his tone remained strong, but he hardly sang two phrases of the music—it was all a straight-toned parlando, tiring to listen to, and the production concept left him with little leeway for physical acting. Michelle de Young, the Herodias, sounded hollow and unstable, and the Narraboth, Piotr Buszewski, showed a pleasant lyric tenor of too small a calibre for that important role. As is so often the case with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his orchestra, the performance was perfectly decently played and proportioned, but seemed lacking in suspense and dramatic urgency. These talented players don’t sound as if they have the score in their bones.

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NEXT TIME: As in the past couple of years, I’ll be taking a summer hiatus. However, I do plan to see the version of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa being offered by the Heartbeat Opera at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. I’d first thought that this opera, such a big success at the Met in the ’50s and fairly often on the schedules of our regional companies for some years afterward, might tandem with thoughts about John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra and a look back at Barber’s own A&C , which opened the Metropolitan opera House we have now. It happens that I don’t have a lot to say about the Adams work, but I’ll say it at that time, and perhaps some of the original plan  will survive. I’ll see you with that in September, and till then wish you all a pleasant summer.

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