It’s hard to imagine a better representation of Vanessa‘s music than is heard on the RCA recording.^(I) There are a few spots, like the short prelude (certainly portentous, but portending what?) where Mitropoulos, a great conductor of much operatic music, stirs the pot in search of something that isn’t there, but the reading is on the whole very well paced and balanced, always alive, and expertly played. This time through, I found myself particularly appreciative of Tozzi, who renders the character of the Old Doctor with warmth and geniality (nothing more is called for), his beautiful, ample voice easily tipping in every nuance of what could be an embarrassing final-scene monologue (“For every love there is a last farewell”). Resnik comes across with full baleful presence, as she did in the theatre. Elias, given the most sympathetic of the principal parts, is also fine. The outgoing erotic vibrancy that had first attracted attention to her in smaller parts is present in the voice, and saves the role from lugubriousness. Gedda’s fresh, clear lyric tenor of those early seasons (and he is the Dimitri of the Paris-made Boris conducted by Issay Dobrouwen, which is where many of us had first heard him) easily embraces the range and gestures of Anatol’s writing; interpretively, he follows up on the setting’s clues, scant though they be. Steber, although she vocalizes nearly all of Vanessa’s music beautifully and impressively (an exception is her awkward pass at the silly Skating Aria, which soon became a well-considered cut), is nonetheless the performance’s main problem. Her muddy pronunciation, much complained of in the live event (no surtitles, remember!), remains impenetrable on the recording, save for a few passages in her lower range. And then there is the fusion of her diva personality, then much in evidence in her relationship with the Met audience, with the extravagances of her role’s music and words, the combination of which takes us to the verge of camp.

Samuel Barber wrote a large quantity of high-quality music, instrumental and vocal. Unfortunately, little of it found its way into his two large-scale operas. The second, Antony and Cleopatra, was co–created with another “incredible, legendary queer writer,” Franco Zeffirelli, for the opening night of the Lincoln Center Metropolitan Opera House, and it took one of the memorable face-plants in operatic history. That was by no means entirely Barber’s fault, but in the first of two articles on the occasion I filed for the Financial Times, I commented that the score “contains moments of genteel eloquence, notably in the two death scenes. But the bulk of it is impersonal, pale, and the incidental music for the leading figures is as passionless as one can imagine, particularly when one considers the subject.” Ratcheting Barber’s gift up to the level of sustained high drama just wasn’t within his reach.

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When Steve Barnes wryly noted in his article that although this year’s festival was impressive on many levels, “audience enjoyment isn’t high on the list,” he wasn’t kidding—and I don’t believe he’d even experienced The Annex.^(II) Our experience got off to a rickety start even in advance of the 10-minute drive to the site. At 4:54 on the day before our performance, we received an invitation to a post-performance meet-and-greet and brief talkback and, thinking it might be interesting to hear peoples’ reactions, accepted. But at 10:57 the next morning, we were notified of the event’s cancelation. Unsettling, to first of all be invited on such short notice, then uninvited on even shorter (not enough response? too much response? simple disorganization?), but nothing daunted, we headed on over. We’d been advised by WTF that since admission was by general admission only, it would behoove us to line up well in advance of startup time, so we pulled into the forlorn venue in time to be ushered into The Annex at 6:10, twenty minutes en avant. The space is a rectangular box, with seats on risers along the long side and lower down on the two ends, embracing an oblong performance space consisting of an empty floor and a back wall, with the seven-piece instrumental ensemble occupying or blocking about half of the seating area on the audience-right end. It is to be expected that under the general admission understanding some seats will be set aside for important donors, people connected with the event, and so on. Still, it was a jolt to see that in the preferred center section, over half the seats, including all the choice ones, had been designated “reserved.” We were able to snag two seats in the third row (of four) in the center section, a little to the right of center. The seats were folding chairs with thin cushions and no lower back support, so we, along with several of the other elderlies, stood most of the time through a long delay caused in part by a technical snafu, until the performance at last began, at 6:55, sharp.