Profile reviews
1Matthew Rose as Leporello proved a superlative foil for Meachem’s Don. The two men showed a symbiotic rapport, throwing their dialogue back and forth with such rapid-fire ease one could almost believe they had been master and valet for years. Rose delivered a graceful Catalogue Aria and showed surprising agility in Leporello’s tongue-twisting patter in Act II. But mostly he was genuinely funny, a rarity in a role often played with clownish overkill; Rose’s goofy dance moves in the ensemble scenes were a hoot, cracking up Susan Graham, in the audience on a night off from Dead Man Walking.
Past Production Reviews
3Nicky Spence rings out like a heroic peal of bells as Siegmund. Emma Bell’s Sieglinde, in jeans and a tee-shirt, was the abused wife from The 39 Steps, welcoming a stranger (here with an industrial-sized jerry of water). Like Brünnhilde, a decent woman surrounded by vile men. The siblings work well together, despite schematic direction which initially has them moving like the figures in a German weather house.
Nézet-Séguin wanted to conduct the piece in French. Now, as the company’s music director, he has made it so. It speaks to his passion for the score that this is the first opera in his still-young Met career for which he is leading a third run, and his conception of it — long-breathed, patient, light-textured — embodies the vast elegance of French grand opera.
In London, Fleming’s colleagues were less consistently good than Fleming herself. Reiffenstuel’s dresses for Alice Coote’s Octavian and Mariandel were not the most becoming the mezzo-soprano has worn on this stage, where she has thus far specialized in male characters. Coote’s singing was often ungainly, frequently with a discomfiting rawness to the tone. The finest exponent of the three main women’s parts was Sophie Bevan, who sang the ingenue role of her namesake to perfection, with a top register to die for.Steinberg’s family-sized sets looked too big on the Covent Garden stage; the Princess’s bedroom and its mammoth collection of dynastic paintings dwarfed the characters. A troublesome feature of Act II was a collection of enormous field guns and an obsession with rifles: in his desire to underline the militarism of his redesignated period, Carsen decided, without any specifics in Hofmannsthal’s text to back it up, that the army supplies that provide the basis of Faninal’s fortune were, in fact, armaments. Act III swapped the original’s dubious suburban inn for a palatial, populous brothel, where Ochs’s assignation with Mariandel almost got lost in the wider sweep of hedonistic goings-on. Overall, Carsen’s direction lacked the detail and focus that can make Der Rosenkavalier profoundly moving. Supplying some, at least, of the missing magic was the conducting of Andris Nelsons, whose enthusiasm for Strauss has already resulted in persuasive Covent Garden performances of Salome and Elektra. Once again his ability to balance super-enriched textures and provide dramatic momentum in a score that needs to be kept on the move paid rich dividends. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House responded keenly to his confident direction.
