Kurzak, Aleksandra

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    The Metropolitan Opera’s Season Begins With a Boom

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    “Grounded,” the new work that opened the season, has been joined by revivals of three Puccini, Verdi and Offenbach classics.The Metropolitan Opera’s season began not with a bang or a whimper, but with a boom.In “Grounded,” Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s new work about a fighter pilot turned drone operator, which opened the season last week, a group of soldiers lets out a stentorian “boom” to depict an F-16 dropping a bomb. It’s a laughable moment; but the real sonic blast arrived during Puccini’s “Tosca,” a few days later.At the fever pitch of that opera’s second act, Mario Cavaradossi, an artist and revolutionary sympathizer, stumbles, bloodied and almost broken, out of a torture chamber and hears the news that Napoleon’s army has won a major battle. “Vittoria!” he cries, summoning his last vestiges of strength in a triumphant declaration of victory.It’s one of the most dramatic moments in a peerlessly dramatic opera. And on Saturday evening, the tenor SeokJong Baek held the two high B flats on the final syllables so long that the audience burst into a delighted ovation that covered the rest of his phrase. It was an unsubtle, unrestrained spectacle — and a deeply satisfying one, the kind of slightly guilty pleasure that’s a crucial part of why we go to the opera.Baek is one of several fine singers in the Met’s opening quartet of titles — “Grounded” and revivals of “Tosca,” Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” and Verdi’s “Rigoletto” — though not one of the four is a must-see. There was a sense over the week that the company was gradually gearing up rather than coming out full force.There are worthy performances scattered throughout, though. The score of “Grounded” is humdrum, but the show boasts a memorable protagonist in the mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, her dusky, penetrating tone the vocal embodiment of an anxiously furrowed brow.Poised and demure, the tenor Benjamin Bernheim is suavely melancholic in “Hoffmann.” The soprano Erin Morley, as the super-high-note-flinging robot he falls for, is an uncanny blend of human and unreal, and the mezzo-soprano Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, making her Met debut, is earthy yet eloquent in the dual role of Hoffmann’s friend and muse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ukrainian Conductor Oksana Lyniv Arrives at the Met Opera

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      Oksana Lyniv, who is leading “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera, has used her platform to criticize Russia and promote Ukrainian culture.The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv was preparing for a performance of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera this month when she saw the news: A Russian drone had hit a building in Odesa, not far from the home of her parents-in-law.She called her family to ensure they were safe. But images of the attack, whose victims included a young mother and children, lingered in her mind. When she conducted that night, she felt the pain of war more acutely, she said, praying to herself when Liù, a selfless servant, dies in the opera’s final act and the chorus turns hushed.“In that moment, I saw all the suffering of the war,” she said. “How do you explain such sadness? How do you explain who gets to be alive and who has to die?”Since the invasion, Lyniv, 46, the first Ukrainian conductor to perform at the Met, has used her platform to denounce Russia’s government. She has also set out to promote Ukrainian culture, championing works by Ukrainian composers and touring Europe with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, an ensemble that she founded in 2016.The war has raised difficult questions for artists and cultural institutions. Russian performers have come under pressure to speak out against President Vladimir V. Putin. Ukrainians have faced questions too, including whether to perform Russian works or appear alongside Russian artists.Lyniv, who now lives in Düsseldorf, Germany, has sometimes felt caught in the middle. She protested last month when a festival in Vienna announced plans to pair her appearance with a concert led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has come under scrutiny over his connections to Russia. (The festival canceled his appearance.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: The Met Opera’s ‘Turandot’ Returns With a Strong Debut

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      In a revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s lavish production, the conductor Oksana Lyniv led a performance that transcended the gilded stage dressing.Puccini’s “Turandot,” a verismo opera set in a fabled version of ancient China, makes for an odd love story. Its unlikable romantic leads go largely unfazed by the death and dismemberment they instigate; when they finally share true love’s kiss, they’re standing atop a figurative pile of corpses.On Wednesday at the Metropolitan Opera, the conductor Oksana Lyniv made a strong debut, emphasizing the murderous, life-or-death stakes instead of the fairy-tale Orientalism that has made it a cultural lightning rod in recent years.“Turandot” has been on the receiving end of calls for revision and more for the stereotypes it perpetuates about Chinese people — such as its “dragon lady” title princess — recalling an imperialistic era of European chauvinism.The reckoning around “Turandot” creates a problem for the Met, because the company’s long-running production, a lavish spectacle introduced by the director Franco Zeffirelli in 1987, is a hit. The gold-and-ecru throne room of Act II still dazzles, and eye-popping exoticism runs rampant, with acrobats, ribbon dancers, curled-roof pavilions and a dragon puppet.But that stage dressing was not present in Lyniv’s exciting conducting. The brass stabs that open Act I had an almost expressionistic quality — severe, vital, grim — and the ones that closed it were cold, powerful and withholding. Taut strings and slinky woodwinds moved with dramatic, serpentine efficiency. Lyniv seized opportunities to foreground astringent harmonies.Turandot’s motif, which Puccini based on a Chinese folk song, was splendid without being decorative in Act I, and warmly earthy in Act III after the princess had been humbled. Lyniv’s sense of rubato created just enough elasticity for the singers to phrase naturally, as in the ministers’ dreamily nostalgic “Ho una casa nell’Honan.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: A Tenor Arrives at the Met Opera in ‘Elisir’

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      The 27-year-old Xabier Anduaga debuted in the role of Nemorino in a revival of Donizetti’s romantic comedy.There are some arias that are so beloved, so virtually indestructible, that they more or less sing themselves. Think of “La donna è mobile” or “Vissi d’arte.” A good performance gets audiences applauding; a great one transports them.“Una furtiva lagrima,” with its teary sighs and bursts of joy, is one of those arias, and when the 27-year-old Spanish tenor Xabier Anduaga sang it on Sunday in the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Donizetti’s frolicsome comedy “L’Elisir d’Amore,” time seemed to stop. Cutting a lonely figure in a field against a midnight-blue sky, he sang with enchanting beauty. He took the second verse in a beguilingly soft tone and rounded out the cadenza with a convincing messa di voce — one more polished than the rendition captured on video last week.Anduaga’s soigné style, and vibrant yet plangent timbre, made him an uncommonly sensitive Nemorino — more of a melancholy-prone Werther scribbling poeticisms in a notebook than a sunny country bumpkin mooning over his beloved. His gracefully produced sound nevertheless carried wonderfully throughout the Met’s vast auditorium, and his acting, subtly charming instead of cloyingly eager, was of a piece with his voice.Still, Anduaga missed opportunities that seemed tailor-made for him — the descending lines of “Adina, credimi” lost their legato — but once he figures out how to bring his ravishing vocalism to the less showy parts of this role, it will no doubt become a signature one.Nemorino has his eye on a woman who is worldlier than he — he admires her studiousness in his first aria — and Aleksandra Kurzak’s confident, intuitive way with Adina’s music, reflecting a long familiarity with coloratura roles, implicitly conveyed that quality. Some breathiness perforated her tone, and her vibrato widened at high volume, but she did tap into the magic of her early coloratura days with a silvery, delicately vulnerable “Prendi.”The baritone Joshua Hopkins, who sang Papageno in Julie Taymor’s production of “The Magic Flute” earlier this season, turned in another fantastic performance. With a velvety tone, cocked eyebrow and dash of swagger, his Belcore was as much a macho sensualist as a cartoonish military sergeant. Even though “Come Paride” is something of a gag — nodding as it does to Dandini’s supercilious “Come un’ape” from Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” — Hopkins’s evenly textured, firmly woven sound elevated it to a thing of beauty. Elsewhere, his patter percolated, creating a smooth yet lively murmur.Bartlett Sher’s production has Dulcamara arrive in a gilded carriage bearing his snake oils, and as opera’s favorite charlatan, Alex Esposito traded basso buffoonery for the tradition of slippery salesmen like Pirelli and Harold Hill.The conductor Michele Gamba painted in dusky pastels, finding unanimity of color in swelling strings and pearly woodwinds. There were occasional ensemble issues, but once the opera entered its final stretch — with “Una furtiva lagrima” flowing into “Prendi” and on to the all’s-well finale — Donizetti’s sturdily constructed masterwork seemed to take care of itself.L’Elisir d’AmoreThrough April 29 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

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      Review: ‘Tosca’ Returns, Defined by Its Quiet Moments

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      Aleksandra Kurzak, moving into heavier repertoire with Puccini’s opera, played the title diva as touchingly human.When Aleksandra Kurzak, a graceful lyric soprano with impressive coloratura, released an album of surprising, heavy repertoire from the Romantic and verismo eras two years ago, she seemed to announce: Staged performances are on the way.Her Tosca arrived at the Metropolitan Opera last March, and on Tuesday, she revisited the title role of Puccini’s tragedy in David McVicar’s attractive, if stolid, production. For a singer who made her house debut in 2004, scaling Olympia’s vertiginous runs and high notes in Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” “Tosca” is a departure. Wagnerians and Verdians have sung it; Mozarteans, too. But an Olympia? That’s rare.On Tuesday, Kurzak’s best moments were gentle ones. Tosca, an opera singer herself, is often portrayed as a volcanic personality, a creature made for the stage whose feelings constantly threaten eruption. But Kurzak’s softly focused heroine was the kind of performer who transforms before an audience. Jealous tantrums and high moral stakes spurred her to summon fire and grit.Kurzak seemed to manipulate her otherwise silky tone to make it bigger, darker and more dramatic. It sometimes sounded swallowed and breathy. Whenever she let a more fragile sound emerge, alighting on a silvery high note or shaping throwaway lines with color and care, it was captivating. The end of her “Vissi d’arte” — when most singers are recovering from the aria’s exposed climax — was exquisitely handled.It’s unusual to remember a Tosca for the small moments instead of the big ones, but Kurzak’s approach made her Roman diva touchingly human and acutely tragic.In the orchestra pit, Carlo Rizzi also mined Puccini’s lacerating score for tenderness. Scrappy filigree accompanied the Sacristan (a characterful Patrick Carfizzi) in his fussy, officious role as the opera’s designated comic relief. The strings shivered with romance during a transitional lull in Tosca’s Act I scene with Cavaradossi. Rizzi let notes hang in the air with a hint of menace, then turned up the intensity for the score’s splashy, hair-raising torments. In Act III, he painted a dusky morning scene and signaled the nefarious business of execution to come without shortchanging either effect.Michael Fabiano lent Cavaradossi a handsome, propulsive tenor. His middle voice has consistently been gorgeous, and his stage presence kinetic, but as recently as a 2018 “Mefistofele” and a 2019 “Manon” at the Met, his high notes were unreliable. No issue there: In “Tosca,” they rang out with confidence and muscularity, capped by a dome of sound. Fabiano’s full-throttle style in “Recondita armonia” revealed the heart of a revolutionary rather than an artist; and if soft singing in his Act III solos was weak, his desperately clinging to Tosca before his execution was rending.Luca Salsi, an engrossing, casually evil Scarpia, sang in a manner more like pitched speech, pointing his voice into the hall in a way that balanced the police chief’s debonair manner and thinly veiled malice. As Spoletta, Rodell Rosel was a smarmy henchman; as Sciarrone, Christopher Job was a rugged one.McVicar’s staging is so harmless, with just enough good taste to keep detractors at bay, that it already seems like a part of the Met’s furniture, despite being only five years old. Still, with the right performers bringing a sense of intimacy to its vast canvas, it feels like a success.ToscaThrough Nov. 4, then again next spring, at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More