The Metropolitan Opera Summer Concert with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna

The Met changed its policy for their summer in the parks concerts, instead of doing a concert version of a whole opera in several parks this year they choose a single concert with operas love couple Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. Surprisingly they choose to have it in Prospect Park in Brooklyn rather than Central Park in Manhattan where almost all major concerts have been held in the past. Good news for us since we live near the main entrance to the park. They planned for 100,000 people to attend; they had 10 speaker towers and huge TV screens setup going back what seemed like quarter mile. I don’t think nearly that many people attended but there were thousands of us. We got to have our picnic near the stage since my wife and a friend volunteered to stake out a place for us 4 hours before the concert began. I was lucky all I had to do was stop home after work and carry the wine and food to our blanket.

The concert was made up of sentimental favorites for the most part, popular arias, duets and overtures from Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti, Bizet and Delibes. The music selected was perfect for a crowed of varied knowledge of opera. My guess that most people in the park had never been to an opera house. Even to those of us who go to more than 10 operas a year a smaltzy concert like this is fun. The Alganas (they are a married couple) are old fashioned in their sentimentality and especially Roberto is that way on stage in a role. There is a place for everything is this was the place for pure emotion. The combination of the music, evening and the wine that many people brought led to lots of hugging by young couples, and even to holding hands by us older couples. People who go to opera often let down their critical guard to feel like we did when we first heard it. Tears actually came to people eyes, you can’t really ask for more from art. That said the musical highlight of the evening was provided by both the Met Orchestra and Met Chorus as often happens in operas at the house itself. There “Va, pensiero” was especially good, I was sorry that they didn’t repeat it for the traditional encore.

The sound was good for this type of event; outdoor amplification has come a long way in the years since I first attend the Met in the Parks concerts. It made no real difference that we were near the stage the sound would have been the same a quarter mile back on the meadow. We could see musicians and 2 soloists clearly on the stage but my eyes were often seduced by the giant images on the jumbotron screens on either side of the stage. A pity since up there you could see that Angela and Roberto’s kisses were merely stage kisses. After a bunch of encores we walked back home down a familiar path on the side of the meadow, it seemed strange to see it so crowded at 10:30 at night. People were talking and smiling, it was nice watching everyone melting back into Prospect Heights after a fun evening of song.

Jonathan Biss James Levine and The MET Orchestra

The last concert of the 3 the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra played in its Carnegie Hall series was held Thursday 5/22. It was in the familiar format of a contemporary piece followed by a concerto by a noted soloist and a universally loved war horse after the intermission. Still with the contemporary composer being Levine favorite Eliot Carter and the soloist being the hot 28year old Jonathan Biss led to an exceptional evening. The scalpers and people looking for tickets in the crowed out front proved that there was some buzz too.

Eliot Carter’s Variations for Orchestra from the mid-1950s has obvious references many earlier composers: Ives, Schoenberg and Berg were obvious to me and I’m sure others caught more influences in the 10 variations. That said it was more Cater than anything else, like all worthwhile composers he is mostly himself. Carter was born in 1908 and has seen a lot of styles and has been influenced by many of them. The Met players played the variations well although they are difficult but after all they are used to playing a different style each night at the opera house, they are stars at adapting.

Jonathan Biss is well known already, although he is young, I was anxious to hear him play for myself. I was very happy with what I heard. His playing of the solo parts of the Schumann Piano Concerto were very mindful the works Romantic period but played with intelligence and feeling never with unnecessary flash. We may have come to a glorious time in performance history where intelligence is held in higher regard than gloss, or perhaps I’ve just been lucky lately. Levine and his forces also played in a restrained intelligent way, a perfect match.

The season started Oct 1^st with Lucia di Lammermoor, since then its been 7 operas a week, with the occasional Sunday for Carnegie Hall performances. For a last piece maestro Levine gave them Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. This gives most of the musicians a chance to play all out and they seemed to have fun doing it. Not the most subtle music ever written but it gave each section a chance to strut itself. The audience loved it. At the end Levine asked each section to stand starting with the woodwinds and each section got a huge ovation. Levine got a larger ovation than and section and the whole orchestra the greatest ovation of all. It was fun for the audience too; it gave us a chance to thank them for a nice concert and a great season.

Philip Glass’s Satyagraha at The Metropolitan Opera

Opera librettos don’t really have a good reputation, a few librettists like Lorenzo Da Ponte and Hugo von Hoffmansthal are respected but often the libretto is either derided or not even mentioned when talking about opera. Its no wonder since the story is most often just a framework to give the work form, the real point being communicated by music. Phillip Glass realized this and deals with the problem by doing away with the liner story completely replacing it with meditations on the subjects work, philosophy and illuminating moments. When Mr. Glass jumped into public view with Einstein on the Beach this seemed as much a part of Minimalism as the music. I thought the combination was potent when I first saw Satyagraha in 1981 and still found it moving and effective when I saw at The Met on Monday.

Satyagraha has been translated as a compound of two Sanskrit words meaning, according to the Met Playbill as truth force or holding on to truth. The libretto is indeed in Sanskrit and is made of excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita and other sources that illuminate the opera’s subject - the ideas of peace, human rights and self respect that transformed Gandhi and through him Indians in South Africa and India and eventually others around the world, specifically Martin Luther King Jr. This may sound very static but I found the combination of the music played by a small orchestra of strings and woodwinds (with a single electronic keyboard), the production and words to be very effective. The music the first score Glass wrote for traditional rather than electronic instruments, when I first heard it I was amazed at the increased interest the traditional instruments add to the minimalist style. As conducted by second generation Glass specialist Dante Anzolini the music was meditative in just the way the opera demands. Its not that it doesn’t move its that it moves you in ways too subtle to think about but just right for feeling. The flutes and bassoons were particularly effective; they have been noticeably effective all season. The Chorus and soloists performed the music like theve been singing it all their lives. Richard Croft as Gandhi used his gentle tenor voice with true grace. I know some people are offended by Glass’s music but that is hard for me to understand since it works so well for me.

The production was by Phelim McDermott of the Improbable Theater Company was created jointly with The English National Opera and has already played successfully in London. While the production is respectful to the subject matter it is also fanciful in many places. I especially liked a bit when coat hangers came down from the ceiling as Gandhi, his supporters and the Indian workers took off their European closees, put them on the hangers leaving them in their traditional Indian garb. This scene simply said more both musically and theatrically than a more traditional opera ever could. If the first two acts were kind of George Grosz meets Julie Taymor, which ain’t bad, The last act, called King, was especially moving. As the act unfolded an actor mutely portrayed Dr. King giving his famous speech at the Washington Mall. Film of the event was also projected on the back of the stage. As the scene went on the window grew large enough to fill the entire back of the stage. In its way it reminds us that what started as a personal journey by one man grew to affect the whole world. In many was this production at the Met was done better than the one I saw in Brooklyn in 1981, but by far the best difference is that apartheid doesn’t exist in South Africa anymore.