United Kingdom Tchaikovsky, Matthew Aucoin, Berlioz and Verdi: Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano), Angel Blue (soprano) and Russell Thomas (tenor), The Met Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor). Barbican Hall, London, 29.6.2023. (CSa)
Tchaikovsky – Fantasy-Overture Romeo and Juliet
Matthew Aucoin – Heath (King Lear Sketches)
Berlioz – ‘Chers Tyriens’; ‘Chasse royale et orage’; ‘Adieu, fière cité’- from Les Troyens
Verdi – Act 4 from Otello
Cast:
Russell Thomas – Otello
Angel Blue – Desdemona
Deborah Nansteel – Emilia
Errin Duane Brooks – Cassio
Michael Chioldi – Iago
Richard Bernstein – Lodovico
Adam Lau – Montano
After an absence of more than 20 years, the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, now under its director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, returned to London’s Barbican Centre on the second stop of its European tour. Liberated from the depths of the orchestra pit and the acoustical challenges of Lincoln Centre’s cavernous 3,800 seat auditorium, every member this talented ensemble – individually and collectively – could be seen, heard and truly appreciated from the platform of a wood panelled hall, half the size.
The programme, a carefully themed selection of works inspired by Shakespeare, burst open in a blaze of orchestral colour and musical passion: Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet. The playing was finely balanced, and as texturally fresh and richly dynamic as one could wish for. Nézet-Séguin, attired in black satin tux and hand-made patent leather pumps is every inch the impresario. He invariably brings high voltage electricity and showbiz glamour to his performances. Wielding his baton like a rapier or driving it forward like a dagger, one could almost have mistaken him for a warring Capulet or a feuding Montague. His unrestrained podium expressivity proved a little distracting, but he nonetheless succeeded in imposing steely precision in the cut and thrust fight episodes and coaxed from his New York players a tender lyricism in the sweeping tragic passages.
Tchaikovsky’s account of the needless death of the starstruck lovers was followed by a powerful performance of Matthew Aucoin’s Heath (King Lear Sketches), a bleak depiction of Lear’s fulminating madness on the heath. The piece is arranged in four continuous sections, the first of which, ‘The Divided Kingdom’, presents a sombre, barren landscape in which tolling bells, eerily dissonant woodwind, and portentous beats of a snare drum reflect the King’s impending mental disintegration. The second section, simply entitled ‘Fool’, utilises shrill demented flutes and xylophones. Outstanding playing here emphasised the coded messages concealed beneath the jester’s manic clowning, and the growing madness of Lear and his court. A mournful oboe, accompanied by harp and vibraphone, are utilised in the brief third section: ‘I have no way…’ to express the blinded Gloucester’s stumbling progress across the heath before his futile attempt to jump to his death, while the swelling chords of the final movement end ominously ‘With a Dead March’. The work closes with Lear’s last breath, subtly suggested by a gentle whisper of percussion.
The fateful message of doomed love, despair and suicide continued to thread its way through the concert’s first half with extracts from Les Troyens, featuring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in sublimely supple voice. Regal in bearing, she dominated the stage, animating the role of Dido, grief-stricken Queen of Carthage, with no more than a simple gesture of the hand, a turn of the head or raised eyebrow. Props, costumes and scenery would have been superfluous. From Dido’s first commanding clarion call to arms – ‘Chers Tyriens’ – to the heart-rending ‘Adieu, fière cité’ in which the Carthaginian monarch recalls her nights of boundless ecstasy and rapture with the unfaithful Aeneas, and bids farewell to her people, DiDonato gave expression to the infinite emotional range and colour of her silvery mezzo. Moving from moments of assertive command to intense vulnerability, she summoned up all her theatrical and vocal skills, unobtrusively supported by Nézet-Séguin and his players. It was a bravura performance worthy of an encore. ‘Sing anything!’ begged one enthusiastic member of the audience. ‘Oh, all right!’ countered DiDonato coyly, as if her rendition of Morgen!, the last of Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, was no more than a spontaneous afterthought. What followed was a carefully planned and mesmerising performance of transcendental beauty.
After the interval came the fourth act of Verdi’s Otello, featuring two more stars in the operatic firmament, honeyed soprano Angel Blue as the hapless Desdemona, and stentorian tenor Russell Thomas in the title role. Without the dramatic build-up in the first three acts and, in the absence of any stagecraft, it was difficult for Thomas to convey the depth of the Moor’s descent into murderous paranoia, or to express the full intensity of his grief when the truth is revealed. By the same token, it would have been unreasonable to expect from Blue a fully developed character portrayal of Otello’s blameless victim. Despite these disadvantages, both sang with heartbreaking beauty. Blue’s purity of tone, particularly in her upper register, was nowhere more apparent than her plaintive rendition of the Willow Song, while Thomas, in a performance of power and pathos, convincingly communicated the character’s inner torment.
A rapturous response from the full house triggered a final encore: a delightful performance of Florence Price’s Adoration adapted for orchestra and solo violin tenderly played by the Met’s concertmaster, David Chan. It was a good note on which to end a memorable evening, and in the best showbiz tradition, left us wanting more.
Chris Sallon