steve's notebook

(Feb. 5, 2011)

• Fanciulla del West last night.
• I didn’t really know the piece at all going in and that always adds to the experience. It’s easier to give in to the music when I don’t know where it’s headed and I can buy into the tension when I don’t know exactly when Minnie will come riding to the rescue.
• It was Hal Prince’s 1978 production. His designers were Eugene and Franne Lee, who would go on to do Sweeney, and the look is strikingly similar. An expanse of mountains fills the rear of the stage, like the Sweeney’s London factory set, while the playing area for the first two acts is confined to saloon and then house set pieces, like the Fleet Street shop unit. Order dwarfed by, and at times threatened by, the wilds of nature. (Minnie’s moral order threatened by the wilds of passion.)
• Hadn’t seen Voigt live since her 2009 Isolde. Last night, her opening high notes were a little scary. (It makes me worry for the Walküre hojotohos) But she was much securer once she warmed up.
• Minnie is a necessarily religious character; the opera is about redemption. Here, Voigt came across as sisterly and safe with the miners and then soft and frightened with Johnson. She played it well. But, it would be interesting to see a production in which Minnie starts off harder and colder, not soft but having actively stunted her passions to survive as a woman alone in the West, and eventually warms and discovers them when she falls for Johnson. It would give more scope to her redemption narrative, to match his.
• Giordanni’s top rang. His lower range was underpowered. Vratogna was probably the strongest of the three throughout his range. The vocal comparison made Rance the more charismatic of the rivals. But, then, I’ll always pick the baritone.
• The supertitles needed work. A particularly unpoetic translation: the flat melodrama of “He’s the first man I ever kissed; I can’t let him die!” got a big laugh.
• Also, avoid mentioning inches in any line that names Dick Johnson.
• The Indian maid. What was that? Not only is she there for two minutes of “White lady tells us to get married and stop living in sin and when marry we’ll get beads and whiskey!” but they costumed her like the Land o’ Lakes Indian. Single feather and all. And a teepee and a papoose. Yikes.
• Between the sharp-shooting and the Indians, Voigt will be ready to tackle Annie Get Your Gun at Glimmerglass.
• The music is a change for Puccini. It doesn’t have the same long melodic lines and pauses for contemplative arias that you find in Boheme and Butterfly. The lines were more fragmented and approaching something angular. But then Trittico and Turandot return to the lush sweeping sound. So I wonder if this was his musical idea of America. Certainly the open fifths and galloping rhythms of stereotypical Americana were there. But I also wonder if this choppier sound is how an Italian perceives English.
• Think I’m going back for Lohengrin this Friday. I’m in love with the opening phrase of James King’s “In fernem Land.” So gentle. Haven’t heard Botha before.