The Enchanted Island Live in HD January 21
Joyce DiDonato and David Daniels Shine
By: Susan Hall - Dec 29, 2011
Report from the Metropolitan Opera, final dress rehearsal of The Enchanted Opera, upcoming in HD on January 21, 2012.
If this were a Metropolitan Opera Gala or a Richard Tucker Awards concert, it would be wonderfully engaging. After all, we have singing one after another the mega mezzo Joyce DiDonato and the beautifully etched voice of the irresistible David Daniels. Young countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, who showed his stuff in the City Opera's Partenope and then as Prince Go Go in the New York Philharmonic's Le Grand Macabre, here appears as whipped creme in two arias near the end of the stage doings.
Elizabeth De Shong, a strong young mezzo from the Lyric Opera's Ryan program and tenor Paul Appleby from the Met's own Lindemann program, are thrilling to hear in what surely will prove to be huge careers. Appleby has a lovely lyric line. De Shong compares favorably with her stagemate DiDonato as she delivers an incredibly deep and full lower range in addition to nuanced tones throughout.
But wait. This is not a recital. Nor is it billed as one. Conductor William Christie, a master of the baroque form, noted recently that Schirmer's is going to publish this new opera so high schools across the country can put it on. Here we have a mash up of Baroque composers and two Shakespeare plays dreamed up by the Met's General Manager Peter Gelb. In addition to his GM role and his effective role as artistic director, Gelb has added opera composer.
If we cast aside the heart of opera form, exercised by individuals of great talent who compose music and create drama at the same time, forging a work from one mind, what we have left is "The Enchanted Island."
The sets and costumes are terrific. The team of Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, whose talents together with the composition of Philip Glass produced the Met's most successful recent production, Satyagraha, have provided a banquet of visual delights. Forests, seas, globes and clouds abound. References to every opera one can imagine have been mashed in this set, including mermaids to recall the Rhine Maidens.
Virtual animals look like the island portion of the most recent King Kong movie and also recall Jurassic Park. Projections of photographs of a real swelling ocean remind us that what we see most often on stage is a fantasy, under spell, and make clear that wooden cut-out waves that look like the ocean of HMS Pinafore are make believe.
Daniels in the lead role of Prospero is dressed in a courtly smooth brown velvet coat and pants, the elegant center of this mash up. The demoted mother Sycomax goes from crone or Wicked Witch of the North, to a magnificent Queen dressed in a full-length feathered robe of golden brown, saffron and sunlight yellow to die for.
Ariel, an elaborate Tinker Bell, is in skin-tight warm brown and gold with wings at the ready. She scatters stars in the wake of her arm. Danielle de Niese may have a bit of trouble with her top, but she is a fully engaged actress who rushes here and there across the stage in lieu of flying. Parts of the set actually vibrate along with her runs and trills.
If I were Placido Domingo making a dramatic entrance in the underwater world he governs, surrounded by delectable mermaids, I might consider retiring at the end of this run. How can he best this performance as Neptune? But Domingo's retirement may not be what Gelb has in mind. Looking like an underwater Wotan carrying a trident instead of a speer, Gelb may be salivating over the prospect of Domingo as Wotan, his voice descending before us into a bass-baritone. If the current Ring machine survives safety checks, it is easy to imagine Domingo with an eye patch standing on one of its extended planks as Terfel does, risen from the sea to Valhalla.
Brilliant singing and enchanting sets and costumes may sufficiently entertain for success in the house. With fifteen cameras tracking on stage activity in the popera due in neighborhoods on January 21st, maybe this mash up will be an entertaining movie.
This is the first opera Gelb has conceived so we should give him some slack. That mashed up hand-picked music of Vivaldi, Rameau, Handel, Campra, Purcell, etcetera sounds similar and dull does take some doing. J.S. Bach did not make the cut and must be smiling down in gratitude from above.
Poor Shakespeare gets put through the mashing up wringer too. The Enchanted Island is a bore. Created specifically not to bore, it put the young lady sitting next to me to sleep. On these grounds, a failure.
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