Rizzi, Carlo

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    A Not-Quite-Star Maestro Has a Starry Season at the Met

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    Carlo Rizzi, a Met Opera regular sometimes taken for granted, opened the company’s season this fall and has juggled “Medea,” “Tosca” and “Don Carlo.”Deep in Verdi’s opera “Don Carlo,” an impassioned solo cello line embroiders a bass aria with a vein of feeling.On a recent evening, the conductor Carlo Rizzi was leading the work at the Metropolitan Opera. Rizzi isn’t demonstrative on the podium; his gestures tend to be controlled, focused, professional. But from a seat at the back of the pit, it was possible to see him, at the end of the aria, smile slightly and blow a subtle kiss down in the direction of the orchestra’s principal cello, Rafael Figueroa.It was an affectionate, familial gesture from a man who has become family at the Met. “Don Carlo,” which runs through Saturday, is part of a three-production fall for Rizzi — along with Cherubini’s “Medea,” the season opener, and Puccini’s “Tosca” — that brings his number of performances with the company to more than 250 since his debut in 1993.“I am not 20 anymore,” Rizzi, 62, said in an interview the morning after a “Don Carlo” and before a “Tosca” that evening. “Particularly after the pandemic, I want to enjoy what I’m doing. That’s why I’m happy about these three works at the Met. Each one, in a different way, has been rewarding.”Rizzi is among the stars of the Met’s not-quite-stars, in company with conductors like Nello Santi (who led some 400 Met performances between 1962 and 2000) and Marco Armiliato (nearly 500 since 1998). These are not famous names, just musicians experienced and respected enough to allow the company’s vast repertory factory to function, particularly when it comes to core Italian works like “La Bohème,” “Rigoletto” and “La Traviata” that must be put on with perilously little rehearsal time.His name and face familiar to Met regulars — from the side, with his toss of silver hair and chin stubble, he looks a little like Plácido Domingo — Rizzi is the kind of artist who can be entrusted with “Medea,” a rarely performed opera that he had never done or even seen, late in the game, in addition to his long-scheduled “Tosca” and “Don Carlo.”“He did three operas at once,” said the soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, who sang the title role in “Medea.” “Who else can do that? And not just get through them: These were three spectacularly conducted operas. In my opinion, he is one of the best Italian conductors living right now.”Sondra Radvanovsky sang the title role in “Medea,” which Rizzi conducted to open the Met’s season.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I find him academic, in a good way,” said Michael Fabiano, here singing Cavaradossi in “Tosca” under Rizzi, with Aleksandra Kurzak. “He’s very studied and highly informed.” Karen Almond/Met OperaYet many descriptions of Rizzi include variations on the apologetic phrase “but in a good way.” “It’s going to sound pejorative,” the tenor Michael Fabiano, who starred in “Tosca,” said, “but I find him academic, in a good way. He’s very studied and highly informed.”Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, added, “He’s considered to be really strong, really solid, really reliable — solid in a good way.”The takeaway is that the soft-spoken Rizzi embodies qualities of patient, unshowy craft and dependability that are often overlooked, sadly old-fashioned and definitely unsexy. But they should not be taken for granted.“It’s underestimated how difficult it is for a conductor to succeed at the Met,” Gelb said. “There aren’t so many who have the degree of expertise and level of musicality when it comes to Italian repertoire that he has. We’re fortunate to have a conductor of his quality willing to come here to do the standard repertory.”Born in 1960 in Milan, Rizzi didn’t grow up in a musical family; his father was a chemist and his mother an accountant. But he was shy as a young child, and his parents tried to draw him out with piano lessons; he flourished. (His two siblings ended up with musical careers, too.)On top of his studies, Rizzi spent many nights watching opera at the Teatro alla Scala. These were Claudio Abbado’s years as music director there, and the productions and casts were regularly superb.“I was a pianist, and at the time I was very good at sight-reading,” Rizzi said. “That means that every clarinetist, bassoonist, singer and double bass player was coming to me. And making music together started to become more interesting than just the piano.”He conducted chamber orchestras, and Mozart concertos from the keyboard, and in his late teens began working as a repetiteur — the opera rehearsal assistant position that was the main root of old-school conducting careers.Rizzi did well in a couple of competitions, and began to find work in regional capitals like Palermo and Trieste. Word spread among singers. He was invited to conduct the Donizetti rarity “Torquato Tasso” at the Buxton Festival in England in 1988; that led to an engagement at the Royal Opera in London, and a broadcast reached Brian McMaster, then the leader of Welsh National Opera, who hired Rizzi as music director in Cardiff.Matthew Epstein took over for McMaster just as Rizzi was starting his tenure. (Rizzi served in the role from 1992 to 2001, then again, after his successor resigned, from 2004 to 2008.)“Let’s be honest: Carlo, with his name, is going to be used around the world mostly for the Italian repertory,” Epstein said. “But in Wales he did ‘Elektra’; he did ‘Rosenkavalier’; he did ‘Peter Grimes’ and ‘The Rake’s Progress.’ He’s a superb theater conductor, in the smallest of small groups of people who really work in the theater.”His Met debut was in “La Bohème,” which he has since done more than 60 times with the company. He led a new “Lucia di Lammermoor” in 1998, a new “Il Trovatore” in 2000 and two new stagings of “Norma,” in 2001 and, starring Radvanovsky, on opening night in 2017. “Medea” was his third time opening a Met season.Yet he remains under the radar in New York. His work this fall has been like his Met career in general: nothing fancy, nothing fussy, just clear, compelling readings. “It’s not anything new or different, just the idea of being musically aware with every dramatic beat,” said the tenor Russell Thomas, who sang the title role in “Don Carlo.” “This is maybe my fourth production, and I never had anybody go into that much detail.”Under Rizzi, “Don Carlo” was sober and weighty.Ken Howard/Met OperaRizzi’s “Medea” had the formality of Gluck, who influenced Cherubini, mixed with hints of the tumultuous “Sturm und Drang” movement to come. “Tosca” was colorful and propulsive; “Don Carlo,” sober and weighty.“The way they play ‘Medea’ is not the way they play ‘Tosca,’” he said. “The flexibility is one of the great things about this orchestra.”Among Rizzi’s upcoming projects is to record orchestral suites he has drawn from “Madama Butterfly” and “Tosca.” In future seasons at the Met, he’s slated to return for, yes, Puccini and Verdi — including more “Bohème” and a revival of “Un Ballo in Maschera.”“I really feel, since we did the ‘Norma’ opening night to now, he’s a much different person,” Radvanovsky said. “He’s more relaxed; I feel he’s more comfortable in his baton skill, his skill with the orchestra. His musical language has really relaxed and grown.”Rizzi said: “I don’t want to sound like an old sage, but I’m always in development. I learn more about conducting every day.” Perhaps unexpectedly, given that he is best known for leading the most familiar works in the repertory, in 2019 he became the artistic director of Opera Rara, a London-based company devoted to underperformed titles.“Carlo is incredibly knowledgeable, musicologically and dramaturgically,” Epstein said. “That’s why this Opera Rara thing is good for him. But he should be the music director of an opera house in Italy. It’s silly he hasn’t. And he should have had a go in this country as music director in one of the main houses. He’s not the ordinary Italian conductor — he’s just not. He’s better.”Fabiano, the tenor, locates in Rizzi “the spirit of these older conductors — Votto, Fausto Cleva, Gavazzeni — who had an inherent knowledge of the repertory and knew deeply the needs of the singer. An understanding of what singers need, and the deep care for the letter of the music, the construction of the music, makes for a very terrific maestro.”And while Rizzi is not the most breathlessly marketed baton, Donald Palumbo, the Met’s chorus master, put it simply: “For me, he’s a star.” 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

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      The Met Opera Takes on ‘Medea’ in the Shadow of Maria Callas

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      “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” the soprano Sondra Radvanovsky said after a recent rehearsal of Luigi Cherubini’s “Medea” at the Metropolitan Opera. “Everybody knows this opera because of Maria Callas.”Callas may loom over the legacy of this opera — her various recordings from the mid-20th century dominate the work’s discography — but her star power was never enough to bring it to the Met, which is staging it for the first time only now, with a new production by David McVicar opening the company’s season on Tuesday.Like many people, McVicar was unfamiliar with the opera until he began to study it for this production. It’s a rarity within a rarity — a seldom performed work from a composer who, despite celebrity and respect in his time, is known today for just a sliver of his output, if at all. A tourist at Père Lachaise, the cemetery in Paris where Cherubini is buried, is more likely to visit the neighboring grave of Chopin.“Every version of Medea has a slightly different narrative and slightly different accretion to the myth,” the director David McVicar said.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesBorn in 1760, a French-assimilated Italian who straddled music’s Classical and Romantic eras, Cherubini premiered his “Médée” in 1797 from a French libretto inspired by both the Euripides and Corneille tragedies. It’s a version of the Greek myth in which she, having helped Jason retrieve the Golden Fleece, exacts revenge on him after he abandons her.“Every version of Medea has a slightly different narrative and slightly different accretion to the myth,” McVicar said. “Euripides introduces the idea of the murder of the children for the first time, and the Baroque opera introduces myriad subplots, and twists and turns. This goes back to Euripides. It’s a Classical piece but also gothic: It belongs to a period of gothic Romanticism in arts and literature.”“Medea” has remained on the outskirts of the repertory for its difficulty.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAfter the premiere, “Médée” didn’t catch on, and wasn’t the most beloved of Cherubini’s operas among fans like Beethoven. And his reputation after his death, in 1842, was certainly not helped by portraits — however accurate — such as the one in Berlioz’s memoirs, which include a scene of Cherubini, decades after “Médée” and by then the director of the Paris Conservatory, behaving with fussy villainy.But his fortunes changed in the 20th century. In 1909 “Médée” arrived at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, in an Italian translation, called “Medea,” that replaced the spoken French dialogue with new recitative. That version, which McVicar described as “bigger boned and more concise,” was revived in the 1950s by Callas, who went on to perform it widely, including at La Scala and the Royal Opera House in London.For that reason, the work is most familiar as “Medea” — which is how the Met is presenting it, in the Italian translation — though it has remained on the outskirts of the repertory for its difficulty, taken on by a select group of singers including Leonie Rysanek, Gwyneth Jones and Montserrat Caballé.Radvanovsky, center, with Ekaterina Gubanova, left, who sings Neris, and Axel and Magnus Newville, who play Medea’s children.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesThe Italian version replaced the spoken French dialogue with new recitative.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesMcVicar referred to the opera as a soprano version of “Hamlet” because once Medea enters, she more or less never leaves the stage, in various states of distress and fury.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“You need to have somebody who can sing it,” said the conductor Carlo Rizzi, who is leading the Met production. “If you have that, you do it. If you don’t, you don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.”Hikers, he added, might take on Mont Blanc or Kilimanjaro; but fewer will try Everest. McVicar, for his part, referred to the opera as a soprano version of “Hamlet” because once Medea enters, she more or less never leaves the stage, in various states of distress and fury.At the back of the stage is an enormous, angled mirror that reflects the action from an aerial perspective.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesIt’s a challenge that appealed to Radvanovsky. The idea for the Met’s production came in the wake of another season-opener, Bellini’s “Norma,” which featured the same trio of Radvanovsky, McVicar and Rizzi. She said that Peter Gelb, the house’s general manager, told her he was happy with her performance and asked what she would like to do next. “‘Medea,’” she answered.“Peter said, ‘Are you sure?’” Radvanovsky recalled. “And I said yeah because after ‘Norma,’ where can one go?”She felt that it was a logical fit for her voice — a way to combine her Met history of bel canto works, like Donizetti’s Tudor operas, and verismo classics like Puccini’s “Tosca.” The question was which language she would sing it in. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, had wanted to do the French original and was at first attached to this production, but it was decided that they would follow Callas’s tradition, a better fit for both Radvanovsky and the Met.Following Callas’s tradition was a better fit for both Radvanovsky and the Met.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“I think both are valid,” McVicar said of the two versions. “But you have to be mindful of the house and the cast that you have. The French can work, but you need a much smaller theater, like the Opéra Comique in Paris. And frankly, the dialogues aren’t very good; they’re clunky and old-fashioned.”McVicar joined the production, not only because he and Radvanovsky have a long, fruitful relationship together in opera, but also because a work like “Medea” is where, he said, he feels most at home.“I’m very much identified here with big Italian war horses because I can do them,” he added. “But is that where my interests lie? I’d have to say no. I’m much more interested in something in the hinterlands, like this.” (That’s why he’d also like to work on Janacek operas in the future, with Radvanovsky, whom he could see in “The Makropulos Case.”)Radvanovsky, left, and McVicar. The stage design is deceptively minimal.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesWith a team in place, the premiere was planned for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto — this “Medea” is a coproduction with that house, as well as with the Greek National Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago — but the pandemic upended that. Instead, the first run will be at the Met, and McVicar ended up designing it during the most restrictive lockdowns, when he couldn’t work in person with his usual collaborators. What started as a practical move, though, ended up being his way to stay sane, and creative, he said.McVicar returned to the opera’s origins, and thought about how its tensions and turmoil — “the sheer chaos that Medea is capable of unleashing,” he said — fits with its time, coming out of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, as well as Directoire style.That gave the production its look, with costumes “from the Directoire period, roughly speaking, and a real sense of gothic decay,” McVicar said. His stage design is deceptively minimal: a thrust corner with sliding doors that open to reveal both spare scenes and episodes of opulence. At the back is an enormous, angled mirror that reflects the action from an aerial perspective but also serves as a screen for special effects made from projections on the floor — “literally smoke and mirrors,” as he put it.The angled mirror onstage also serves as a screen for special effects.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesThe score, too, can seem simpler than it is, Rizzi said. It’s not written for a very large orchestra, and it doesn’t contain isolated melodies that the audience will leave the house humming. “That doesn’t mean it’s a bad opera,” he added. “It’s a different opera.”A conductor could interpret the music as Classical, but Rizzi has been working with the Met Orchestra to bring out the mercurial tumult that courses through Cherubini’s instrumental writing. The opening Sinfonia alone, he said, “is not a planting of a stake, it’s a wave of a tsunami.”Much of the opera’s shifting character also relies on Radvanovsky as Medea, who in McVicar’s staging is portrayed with expressive physicality. “She can be serpentine, or what we’ve been calling the Hulk, or a goddess,” Radvanovsky said. “It’s exhausting.”“I could not have thought of a better role to be singing right now than Medea,” Radvanovsky said. “It’s the best therapy you can ask for.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesStill, she added, this is a role that a soprano can’t approach with fear — neither of its history nor of its demands. As an actor, she has drawn on experience that parallels the action of the opera: recently, the dissolution of her marriage and the death of her mother. “I could not have thought of a better role to be singing right now than Medea,” she said. “It’s the best therapy you can ask for.”Beyond the music, Radvanovsky has been working with a personal trainer. “I wear a corset onstage, which is great for singing, but then you combine that with Pilates moves,” she said. “I have to be strong, in the best shape my body can be in. We talk about things as a sprint or a marathon. This opera is a marathon.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times More