| 
|
| Carol Vaness
| Louis Otey |
The Metropolitan Opera commissioned two new American operas, for the 1966-67 season, to mark its move to Lincoln Center from Broadway, between 39th and 40th Streets. The second, Marvin David Levy's spiky "Mourning Becomes Electra," after Eugene O'Neill, will come to the New York City Opera next spring for its first local hearings in almost 37 years. The first, Samuel Barber's lush grand opera "Antony and Cleopatra," with text almost entirely drawn from Shakespeare, was written to open the new Met and was reexamined in a semi-staged concert performance by the American Composers Orchestra (ACO) at Carnegie Hall on April 6.
"Antony," when new, was designed and directed by Franco Zeffirelli, who also fashioned the libretto using Shakespeare's words. Created to show off the machinery of the new opera house, the over elaborate production distracted from the music and all but sunk Barber's new opera. Leontyne Price, Cleopatra to Justino Diaz's Antony, was trapped in an on-stage pyramid during a rehearsal, the lights malfunctioned, and the mechanized turntable, weighed down with scenery and cast, broke down on opening night. "Antony" disappeared from the Met repertory after its premiere season.
With fellow composer Gian Carlo Menotti, his collaborator on his earlier evening-length opera for the Met, "Vanessa," Barber produced a revised "Antony," given successfully in a more intimate setting at the Juilliard School in 1975, with Esther Hinds as Cleopatra. Hinds repeated the role in the 1980s at Menotti's festivals in Spoleto, Italy and Charleston, South Carolina and on disk for New Worlds Records. The opera resurfaced at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the early 1990s, with Catherine Malfitano as the Queen of Egypt.
ACO's performance marked the opera's first New York revival since the one at Juilliard 28 years ago. Music Director Steven Sloane and the singers and orchestra helped bring back memories and made a persuasive case anew for the tale of these famed ill-fated lovers, told in a fairly conservative, traditional musical idiom
While her soprano has undeniably lost some of its erstwhile bloom, Carol Vaness conveyed nonetheless the regal stature and sensuality of the lovesick Queen in glistening tone in "Give me some music," the first act monologue. Vaness forcefully expressed Cleopatra's ire on learning of Antony's marriage to Caesar's sister, Octavia, and brought nobility and emotion to "Give me my robe," the tragic suicide scene. Baritone Louis Otey, replacing Gregg Baker, made a fittingly heroic Antony and his duets with Vaness were other highlights. Noteworthy, too, was the gentle trio eulogizing Antony, sung by Cleopatra and her attendants, Charmian and Iras, portrayed by mezzo-sopranos Margaret Thompson and Elizabeth Batton.
If women are, as some say, from Venus and men are from Mars, then Cleopatra, mistress of the amorous realm, failed when she tried to wage war, while Antony, the Roman general, so forgot his martial duty in Cleopatra's bed-chamber that he enraged Emperor Octavius Caesar and the Senate. Scenes at the Senate crackle with hostility, in contrast with the perfumed strains that characterize Cleopatra's Egypt, and tenor Neil Rosenshein, as Caesar, sounded appropriately hectoring as he fumed and threatened. He limned a lyrical salute, however, to the dead Antony in Act Three. Baritone Arthur Woodley was a sturdy Enobarbus, Antony's faithful comrade-in-arms. Andrew Martens, Matthew Burns, Peter Couchman, Jonathan Goodman, Richard Lippold, Douglas Purcell, Mark Rehnstrom and James Archie Worley took other solo roles with distinction.
Kudos to Judith Clurman's New York Concert Singers for opening and closing the work and offering pointed commentary throughout as the people of Rome and Egypt.
ACO will give concerts at Carnegie on October 8, 2003 and March 10 and April 28, 2004, as well as on February 27 at Carnegie's new Zankel Hall. Music by Steve Reich, Charles Wuorinen (10/8), Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Libby Larsen, Ned Rorem, Nicholas Maw (3/10), Anthony Davis, Duke Ellington (4/28), Lisa Bielawa and Michael Gordon (2/27) will be offered.
Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Avenue at 57 th Street
Tickets $15-45 212/247-7800 or http://www.carnegiehall.org