Opera Ranting

 Here it is, the most legendary production of Boris. Not the most legendary performers, just a document of the most legendary staging: Andrei Tarkovsky in his only opera production. Can you believe they actually got the director of Andrei Rublev to do it? It's even less likely than getting Werner Herzog to stage the Ring, and fully as well-matched.

Tarkovsky would be dead a year after he did this staging. I doubt he ever could have done another production like this, much as we might wish for a Tarkovsky Parsifal or Don Carlo, Boris was uniquely situated in the Russian canon to elicit a connection to Tarkovsky's extremely Russian Orthodox spirituality. The sets are full of the thick smoke of incense, chiaroscuro lighting and horrifically suffering peasants. The chorus is staged in such detail that every grouping of three or four seems to be its own little world with its own story. The images are full of that specifically Russian gaudiness that betrays a unique mixture of the Christianity and paganism which should be present in every Boris production.

But ultimately this is not about Tarkovsky, this is about Robert Lloyd, the great British bass who somehow finds himself on the stage of the Kirov Opera in the soon to fall Soviet Union singing the most iconic role in all Russian repertoire in the opera Stalin never missed a Bolshoi performance of.

I grew up on Lloyd's performance of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death with Mariss Jansons conducting the Shostakovich orchestration: it was one of the most gripping, horrifying things I'd ever heard. You could have knocked me over with a feather as a teenager when I heard Lloyd being interviewed at the Met while singing Sparafucile, and he sounded like he'd grown up a Dickensian street urchin who matured into the voice of Bill Sykes. And yet as an actor, Lloyd looks like he has the weight of the world upon him. It is not merely a protrayal of histrionics, but of Boris in three dimensions. Look at Lloyd in the Clock Scene. Other Boris's explode. Lloyd implodes as though he cannot say his thoughts aloud.

I was raised listening to the radio to broadcasts of what will probably be remembered as the last great generation of Metropolitan opera singers: not just Domingo and Nucci, but Americans like Fleming, Upshaw, Flicka, Hampson, Norman, Battle, Morris, Ramey, Baltsa, Millo, Zadjick, Stratas, Vaness, Studer, Hadley, Leech, Croft, Plishka. It's an admirable list, but when I was in college and had a summer internship in London, I began listening to Radio 3, and one would begin to compare the Brits of the same period: Te Kanawa, Lloyd, Tomlinson, Allen, van Allen, Jones, Lott, Margaret Price, Veasey, Anne Evans, Plowright, Langridge, Tear, Keenlyside, McIntyre, Howell, Shirley-Quirk.

I basically got my introduction to opera from the Met list, but I think the Covent Garden list of that period is artistically more satisfying. Maybe it's the repertoire: the emphasis on the German classics in London vs. the posh Italian of Levine's Met, but compare the Wotans of Tomlinson and Morris. Morris has the most amazing voice, but which of them would you rather listen to more than once? Compare the Violettas of Studer and Stratas to Angela Georghiu and Marie McLaughlin (we'll call Glyndebourne a CG extension). I know which I prefer.

The Met is, always was, and remains, the terrain of stars. It has provided literal thousands of transcendent nights: or, more to the point, it provided transcendent nights three minutes at a time. Levine could instill more sense of ensemble than you ever got in the Bing or Johnson eras, but you can't completely defeat the house aesthetic, particularly when the sense of ensemble is built around stagings gaudy enough to decorate three Broadway shows.

Covent Garden certainly gets all the stars, but unless they're native Brits, stars don't really make CG their home base. Pavarotti and Domingo always were always at the Met, Domingo multiple times a season, in London? Domingo went... once a year? Once every other year? Pavarotti could be absent for years at a time even if he sang concerts at Hyde Park.

England is the land of theater, and theater makes its mark in opera with an aesthetic that cares more about ensemble and drama than vocal production. A composer like Benjamin Britten would not be possible in the US, Britten makes his impact through drama as much as music, and he needed a 'house ensemble' who worked hard with each other to master this material which works as well as they do. We in America have no equivalent to Britten. I suppose our best equivalent is John Adams, but Adams's operas are basically oratorios with stage accompaniment, and even his banner opera Nixon in China couldn't get a performance at the Met for twenty-five years.

Then came Pappano, and he gave Covent Garden another golden age while the Met underwent its time of troubles. Operas stars burn more dimly in every generation, but the Met now appears to be on surer footing with the disgrace of the Levine's ending mostly behind them, but can Yannick really instill a sense of ensemble? Does he want to? Like Levine, he has real strength in Mozart and Verdi, but Levine could be transcendent in those two. YNS? Not quite. He's good in them, but his real ability is in the Frenchies. I will never forget watching his PBS debut of Carmen with the incredibly sexy Elena Garanca, a hellcat in a brunette wig with a low cut shirt and a skirt she'd exploit every opportunity to lift up. If I were Roberto Alagna in that production I'd have left Georghiu and (let's face it) Netrebko and jumped at the chance for Garanca. YNS's rubato seemed to change the tempo in every bar, and it was so natural it seemed to stop time and breathe with the audience. Impressive as some of his Mozart recordings are, it was nowhere near that Carmen. After that, I'd even listen to him conduct Pelleas!

Nezet-Seguin is a very talented podium musician with very real strengths and musical sense. He is also a very vapid one who would take a look at a score like I look at him, like I listen to him, and he gives every indication of a superficial personality. Ideal for party pieces with lots of fireworks and heat where he can be fast, loud, and colorful (and he's a master colorist). But when it comes to the true stuff of the soul, I'd trust even Dudamel and Nelsons before I'd trust that guy. When I heard him do the Firebird and Petrushka, I had the time of my life. When I heard him do Mahler 3 and 9, or Bluebeard's Castle, he didn't have a clue. Meanwhile, Covent Garden is about to get Jakub Hrusa. Hrusa is 44 I think, but he conducts both himself and music like an old man. Focused entirely on probity rather than fireworks. If it's exciting, he accepts it, but he wants depth. And therefore, in both cases, the house styles continue well into 2050 and beyond.

Anyway, this was supposed to be about Robert Lloyd...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEuWBZCpNno