Here's a barn-burner of a piece. Well, actually, the drama is a bit muddled and confusing at first, but ultimately it all works out. I mean, definitely not for the characters, but hey, such is life! It's the French Revolution! What fun! Chénier is an actual poet who was executed in the Terror, although I think this is pretty substantially fictionalized. He and Maddalena, a young aristocratic woman whose family is killed, fall in love. Meanwhile, Gérard, a former servant in their house, who's carrying a torch for Maddalena, has become an up-and-comer in the revolutionary government. He fabricates charges against Chénier so he can get Maddalena to come out of hiding. This works, but after some internal debate, he rejects the idea of playing Scarpia and agrees to help the two of them. It's actually quite interesting because--notwithstanding baroque opera, which is a completely different beast--it is really NOT common for characters so clearly marked as villains to have heel-face turns like this. Still, he does; he tries to save Chénier, but the gods will have blood, and he's taken away to be executed while Maddalena takes the place of a condemned woman so she can die with him. The end!!!
(If you want to know the general attitude towards the historical events, it's basically "the rich people were kind of clueless and oblivious, but the Terror was a bit much," which seems eminently reasonable.)
A lot of great moments here. No one will forget Gérard's "Nemico della patria" aria, where he laments his lost ideals, or Maddalena's "La mamma morta," about how the revolutionaries destroyed her family. And Maddalena and Chénier's final duet, well. There is this Met performance from 1996. Honestly, I often find these old Met productions kind of stuffy and unappealing-looking, and this one is no exception, but it's not a big deal. Juan Pons is really good as Gérard, who--if I haven't emphasized it enough before--an extremely interesting character. Maria Guleghina was sensational as Abigaille in Nabucco, so it's no surprise that she's sensational as Maddalena in this. It also features a young STEPHANIE FUCKING BLYTHE in a small role; she's fine, though it's not necessarily obvious from this how she would come to be known as STEPHANIE FUCKING BLYTHE.
As for Chénier himself...well, let's back up a moment. The question of to what extent we expect opera singers to look like we'd expect their characters to look is a bit fraught. A lot of people are going to say, the voice is ALL. That's the only consideration. And yet, I don't think it is. Otherwise, operas wouldn't have such elaborate productions. Nobody really disagrees that they're a combination of both audio and visual elements, and as such, I think it's not necessarily unfair to think that the appearance of singers should be a factor. I mean fercrissake, we bitch endlessly about productions, so how do you decide what's off-limits? That said, practically speaking, you have to leave A LOT of wiggle room, and I don't think anyone has any problem with that. So the young lovers are more like middle-aged lovers? The soprano is maybe not quite such a radiant beauty that you can picture her driving men to kill? No problem. Pons is technically too old to be playing Gérard--who is supposed to be about Maddalena's age, having grown up with her--but it doesn't really matter.
But there's wiggle room and then there's wiggle room. Chénier is supposed to be young and dashing, and yet he is played by Luciano Pavarotti, who at the time was sixty and corpulent. Also, for some reason, he has really unkempt hair (and not in a sexy, romantic-poet way; just in the way of someone who looks like he couldn't be bothered) and a scraggly beard; I don't know if he was just too big to take guidance from anyone, or if for some misguided reason they WANTED him to look like that (he looks much better in any kind of publicity photo you might see), but either way, he looks about as far from the character as you can get. Don't get me wrong! He's still a great singer! I'm a fan! I listen to this album all the time during the holiday season! It fucking rules! And there would be no problem with his performance if you were just listening to the audio, but boy. I may sound like a philistine and/or a blasphemer here, but I think the drama here would've been substantially improved by a more appropriate-looking lead, even if his voice wasn't quite as good.
I sometimes think that baritones have it easier than tenors in this regard--they usually play villains or otherwise non-romantic characters, and thus age isn't too important, but tenors are always playing romantic leads: burn brightly but flare out quickly? Maybe. Presumably that's why Domingo started taking baritone roles.
No comments:
Post a Comment