Metropolitan Opera Archives

New York. This being the Alban Berg centenary, the METROPOLITAN OPERA scheduled both his operas, over the heartfelt but not hard-fought objections of its retiring president Anthony Bliss, who saw them as 'house-emptiers.' James Levine conducted both, and very beautifully, with that sense of Mahler in Berg that seems to me to inform the work of all who truly love the music of this greatest of the 20th-century Viennese masters. Like Mahler, Berg rarely doubles an instrumental part, and asks great clarity from the orchestral choirs. Even when he has formal fish to fry of a skeletal complexity and sheer boniness far beyond Mahler's interests, he asks for a rather similar sensuous surface, a lean beauty of tone, capable of many combinations. The Met orchestra gave Levine all that and more, including some crescendos of remarkable power that must have been on the edge of painful down in the wooden O of the pit.

The pitches sung on stage were less than perfectly accurate in "Wozzeck," closer to the score, I think, in Lulu. (I do not claim to know either work by heart, and like most Americans of my generation I learned my "Wozzeck" from Mitropoulos's most inaccurate recording; I remember how surprised I was when I heard Kleiber conduct "Wozzeck" at Covent Garden on my first trip to England.) Both operas were exceedingly well acted, a tribute to their casts, to David Alden for the revival of the 26-year-old Graf/Neher production of "Wozzeck," and John Dexter for the refurbishing of his own staging of "Lulu."

The Lulu was a triumph for Julia Migenes-Johnson, who sang beautifully when seducing and harshly when persecuting. It is a role that rarely misses, and each singer places her own mark upon it. The most frightening Lulu of my experience was that of Evelyn Lear, now a wholly convincing Countess Geschwitz in the Met production. Migenes-Johnson's is the most wanton: in her, Wedekind's street-urchin survives and flourishes. Others on stage wink and beckon, relax invitingly against the cushions; Miss Migenes-Johnson, as those who saw the film of "Carmen" will remember, spreads her legs. Mind you, I have no doubt that she could be and probably will be the primmest of Desdemonas; she is a major artist of protean dramatic skills. Incidentally, she was the Lulu in the telecast three years ago, as a substitute for Teresa Stratas, so that one can document how considerably her performance has loosened and matured with time. Recollection says that the maturing voice has grown in size, and no one need worry any longer about whether she can fill this house.

For the rest, we had experts: Franz Mazura's stiffly correct, decent but bewitched Schön; Andrew Foldi's shambling, strangely purposeful (but not at all diabolic) Schigolch; Hilda Harris as Schoolboy, et. al.; Lenus Carlson as an eloquent and muscular Animal Tamer and Acrobat; and an artist of the stature of Edward Sooter (in town to cover for Vickers's Parsifal) as Painter and Negro. William Lewis substituted for Kenneth Riegel as Alwa in the performance I saw; he was just a touch below speed, rather more casual than Alwa's situation justified, and sang cautiously, but was still on balance a plus.

As Bliss feared, "Lulu" played to empty seats, which argues the need for a change in Met marketing strategy (if there is one artist in New York today who should be saleable, it is Migenes-Johnson, the recent beneficiary of a long story on "Sixty Minutes," our most popular non-fiction television programme). But if the Met did everything as well as it did this Lulu, there would be such a scramble to buy subscriptions that we would never have an empty seat.

Search by season: 1984-85

Search by title: Lulu,

Met careers