One night after hearing Marcello Giordani in William Tell at the Met, I got a most unexpected treat. While I was definitely sorry that Natalie Dessay wasn't up to the premiere of Roméo et Juliette at the Met tonight (and really do hope that my schedule allows me to hear one of her remaining performances), I instead got a chance to re-encounter Maureen O'Flynn, the soprano responsible for my personal damascene conversion, so far as opera is concerned.
As I've confessed previously, it was O'Flynn's "Caro nome" in a Houston Grand Opera Rigoletto during the '89-'90 season -- opposite the young Giordani and Leo Nucci -- that well and truly provided my first glimmering of what a night at the opera could be. Before that single moment, I'd been put off by all the dated pageantry and insider bloat, to the point that I couldn't see any reason to be concerned with musty old shows about musty old characters. But O'Flynn's liquid, effortless voice and utterly absorbing emotion in that one aria, expressing intense devotion to a cad that we observers know is going to play her wrong, shook me up in a way I still have trouble describing adequately.
Maybe it was just a realization that no matter how times change, human behavior is pretty consistent. Gilda's ravishing gush over someone we know to be a bad apple is a painful place we've all visited at one time or another. Subtract the historical distance and funny costume, and she's your best friend blurting intimacies between classes, on the phone, by e-mail, whatever. You want to tell her to be careful, but there's no getting that point across. That might seem obvious, but it was a point no professor or textbook had managed to convey in such pointedly human terms before. Something in the radiant passion and utterly innocent trust O'Flynn conveyed that night did the trick -- and it's no hyperbole to say that I've never looked at opera in the same way since.
Did I have the same sense of epiphany tonight? No, but then, why should I have expected to? You only lose it once. O'Flynn's Juliette was beautifully sung, no question. Her voice felt smaller here than it had in Houston, but it was no less precise, effortless and beautiful, and it certainly filled the hall at climactic moments. Dessay would likely (and will probably still) have brought the platinum ping of a superstar charting unfamiliar ground, but O'Flynn's solid performance most likely made me the most happy fella in the house.
I wasn't all that overwhelmed with the new production, an initially attractive but ultimately static affair that left me scratching my head pondering relations to Copernicus, Kepler, MC Escher and Swatch watches -- save for the gorgeous Act Four visual of a matrimonial bed hung among the stars. Ramón Vargas gave what struck me as a handsomely Italianate performance, thrillingly secure high notes and all. Stéphane Degout (as Mercutio), Dimitri Pittas (as Tybalt) and Joyce DiDonato (as Stéphano) provided the evening's most involving action.
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