[Met Performance] CID:303500



Le Nozze di Figaro
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, February 22, 1991




Le Nozze di Figaro (318)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Lorenzo Da Ponte
Figaro
Samuel Ramey

Susanna
Helen Donath

Count Almaviva
Jorma Hynninen

Countess Almaviva
Pamela Coburn

Cherubino
Frederica von Stade

Dr. Bartolo
Artur Korn

Marcellina
Judith Christin

Don Basilio
Anthony Laciura

Antonio
James Courtney

Barbarina
Heidi Grant Murphy

Don Curzio
Andrea Velis


Conductor
James Conlon







Review 1:

Review of John Rockwell in The New York Times

A Replacement Shines in the Met's 'Figaro'

Even with the withdrawal of Mirella Freni as Susanna, the Metropolitan Opera pulled out the casting stops for the first performance this season of "Le Nozze di Figaro" on Monday evening. Indeed, Miss Freni's replacement, Helen Donath, was the best singer in a starry cast. But as an overall performance, this one failed to cohere into a moving statement of this extraordinary Mozart masterpiece.

Part of that failure is endemic: only functionally rehearsed, internationally cast performances in a horseshoe-shaped, 4,000-seat theater, sung in Italian without supertitles so that the audience sits placidly, with comic points conveyed by crude exaggeration. Despite weaker singing in every major role, the recent performance with supertitles in the 1,800-seat New Brunswick (N.J.) State Theater by the New York City Opera National Company provided a far higher degree of pleasure than this one. What was left at the Met was a series of individual performances of greater or lesser effect, all taking place within Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's fashionably distressed settings, with Lesley Koenig now the stage director of record.

Those performances began with Mrs. Donath, who made her Met debut only last month at the age of 50 as Marzelline in "Fidelio," but who acted the part of the spunky ingénue with great good will and sang it with silvery assurance. Hers has been an interesting career. She has stuck securely within the light lyric repertory to which her soprano is best suited, recording Eva in "Die Meistersinger" for Herbert von Karajan in 1971, when he was obsessed with light-voiced Wagnerians, but waiting years to sing this lightest of all of Wagner's lead-soprano parts on stage. In the meantime, she has concentrated on her familiar Pamina-Sophie-Susanna repertory, which she continues to sing to near-perfection.

Several other singers were taking their parts for the first time at the Met. Pamela Coburn, like Mrs. Donath a German-based American, sounded out of sorts as the Countess. Normally - as in "Die Fledermaus" last month at the Met - her soprano is more focused and firmly produced than it was on Monday. Samuel Ramey was the Figaro, as usual a willing actor with a gorgeously produced high bass. A baritone remains slightly preferable in this music, but Mr. Ramey's real problem, again as usual, was that he seemed musically and dramatically bland.

Other firsts included Heidi Grant, who sang Barbarina and delivered a lyrically affecting account of her lost-needle aria, and Judith Christin, whose Marcellina was undercharacterized. One drawback of revivals like this is that sharp detail gets lost, a problem that affected Artur Korn's Bartolo, Anthony Laciura's Basilio and Andrea Velis' Curzio. Only James Courtney, as a pungent Antonio, stood out among the comprimarios.

The sole holdover among the principals from this production's 1985 premiere was Frederica von Stade as Cherubino, a performance that still defines the part for our time. Jorma Hynninen sang the Count with all the meanness of this character in full evidence. Also new to his Met "Figaro" assignment was the conductor, James Conlon. From the quick but brilliantly played and genuinely ebullient overture onward, he conducted a propulsive, buoyant statement of the score, unfortunately bereft of appoggiaturas and most other performance-practice appurtenances.

In case anyone was wondering (nobody I encountered during intermissions was), the squat black box next to the prompter's box was there to make Mr. Hynninen seem even meaner, projecting a light to create a lowering shadow during his third-act aria.



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