THE NEW ZEALAND OPERA SOCIETY

On leaving the position of editor after 16 years, I found myself with the first opportunity in all those years for more than a month out of the country. As I prepared, combing through magazines and websites, all kinds of exciting events started to appear. It became clear that our first stop had to be New York where, in a week, we could see Gergiev conduct Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa, with Burchuladze, Putilin and Olga Guryakova, Don Pasquale with the delicious Anna Netrebko as Norina and Juan Diego Florez as Ernesto, Fidelio with Karita Mattila as Fidelio (Leonore) and Ben Heppner as Florestan, and finally Veronica Villaroel as Verdi's Luisa Miller.

We didn't have a good start in New York: a United Airlines 757-200 overnight from Los Angeles aggravated the jet-lag, in spite of an upgrade to Business class in which I was unimpressed by a bleak, troop-carrier-like cabin with monstrous, ill-positioned, over-stuffed dentist's chairs that didn't recline properly, giving me another sleepless night.

It was just as well that there were two days before Fidelio (28 March), when we quietly enjoyed budding daffodils, early spring leaves and blossom in Herald Square and along Sixth Avenue, getting lost again in Strand Books down near Union Square, and many hours in the refurbished (at a 9-figure cost) Museum of Modern Art, engrossed by a marvellous Munch exhibition and especially, contemporary Spanish architecture. Spain has acquired, over the past 20 years, an astonishing collection of buildings by their own and other countries' architects: art museums, concert halls, opera houses, air terminals, bridges, civic amenities of all sorts.

At our first opera, on the second evening in town, what remained of the jet-lag was dispelled by the glamour of the Met foyers, the curving stairs, the huge opulent auditorium and the famous rising chandeliers that accompany the dimming lights and the conductor's head appearing in the pit.

There was plenty of energy in Paul Nadler's conducting the Fidelio overture, and throughout the orchestra's superb playing was like a balm; yet his pacing and dynamics were always on the side of the singers. The quartet in Act I was taken at an exquisitely unhurried speed and nothing seemed other than what my mind's ear needed.

Karita Mattila and Ben Heppner were the chief ornaments in the cast; I was impressed at the youthful ardour produced by Heppner as Florestan his voice still sweet and full of colour, and by Mattila's very convincing performance as a brave and strong Leonore, powerfully sung. The Jacquino and Marzelline (Gregory Turay and Jennifer Welch Babidge) were a nicely matched pair.

And though the Rocco of Kristinn Sigmundsson sounded sympathetic and humane, he was costumed like a bank manager rather than a chief gaoler. Should mention too, a consummate, dignified Don Fernando from the wonderful James Morris.

Jürgen Flimm's production and Robert Israel's designs brought the story to a contemporary, brutal dictatorship, which worked well enough; stage spaces interesting to look at. But the normally profoundly moving emergence of the prisoners into the light passed me by. Common sense seemed to have been abandoned in the last scene: after Fidelio's sudden unveiling as Leonore, she allows Pizarro all the time in the world to seize the initiative and to disarm her -it's all very static. Then when Pizarro has been arrested, Florestan and Fidelio express the love for each other from opposite sides of the stage, never touching. But that is a common directoral fetish: a Bayreuth Tristan managed to prevent the lovers from being near each other for the entire last act.

The next night was free from opera, but the New York Philharmonic was presenting Verdi's Requiem in the Avery Fisher Hall. Lorin Maazel conducted, rather ferociously at the start: all vengeful, cruel Christianity. Familiar names included Fiorenza Cedolin and Franco Farina who replaced Ramon Vargas; she rather relentless, commanding easily her long passages in the Libera Me, he settling into a very beautiful Ingemisco. Trumpets were scattered around the auditorium during a stentorian Dies Irae; the Tuba Mirum was treated with similar theatricality.

The choral singing was powerful and sounded particularly dangerous in the dotted rhythms of the Sanctus. I decided, after hearing his last offering in the Lux Aeterna, the most moving singing came from bass Orlin Anastassov, not a name I knew. In all, a very exciting, dramatic performance.

The Met continues to hold out against what many still enjoy calling 'Euro-trash' productions—bizarre up-datings and scene shifts that seem to violate the character of the work, while generally remaining scrupulously faithful to the music.

Nevertheless, the Met has been making moves away from strict representational productions, but they are generally in the direction of extraordinary opulence, not to say tastelessness, which often detracts from the aesthetic heart of the work: I'm thinking of George Tsypin's designs for Benvenuto Cellini that I saw at the Met two years ago and his Mazeppa this time - a co-production with the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.

The story of a semi-mythical Mazeppa was familiar in western Europe, dealt with by Byron, Delacroix and Liszt. After an affair with a Polish countess he was tied naked to the back of a horse, set loose across the steppes, outlived the horse which collapsed, and was rescued by Ukrainian peasants, after which he became the heroic defender of the oppressed Ukraine against the Russian Tsars. Gergiev's conducting drew out all the beauties and individualities of Tchaikovsky's score, right from the prelude, that seemed concerned to portray a setting in which barbarity was close to the surface. But director Yuri Alexandrov and Tsypin turned the Russia of the end of the 17th century into a stylistically multifarious, even bizarre, place in a way that seemed to treat the audience as historically ignorant and visually tasteless.  It was burdened with puzzling symbols and overused stage machinery. Gold seems to be Tsypin's thing and here it was in abundance on sets and costumes, and the dancing in the first act was all Olympic gymnastics in amazingly-robed dancers with hardly a hint of the essential brutality, and probably depravity, in such a provincial setting. Nor could I make much sense of the classical busts and columns that adorned the stage.

Act I, Mazeppa

The action, based on historical figures, does not take place in Moscow, but on the estate of a wealthy Ukrainian. Based on Pushkin's Poltava, a pro-Tsarist narrative poem, the story has more complexity introduced by Tchaikovsky. He shows genuine love between Mazeppa and Maria against the background of the age-old tensions between Russia and the Ukraine. Mazeppa evokes sympathy in Act I as a hero attempting to assert the right of a lover (as well as the rights of a repressed minority), but by the end he has become a despicable opportunist. Big Tchaikovsky tunes are scarce, but the music is still rich and emotionally powerful; dramatically it is very fine, which is the reason why it has never been long out of the repertories of Russian opera houses.

Nikolai Putilin as Mazeppa might have been somewhat too polished for the elderly and wild figure he is in the story; Paata Burchuladze's Kochubey, his enemy, carried his role more convincingly: both very fine low voices. Maria, whose eloping with the much older Mazeppa is the drama's impetus, was sung by Olga Goryakova, an impressive soprano of considerable distinction. Andrei, a tenor role invented for the opera though not present in Pushkin, was sung by Oleg Balashov; his final soliloquy before being callously killed by Mazeppa revealed a strong, attractive voice.

The Met wins my approval in supplying free programmes to everyone as they enter the auditorium; the A5 booklet contained a nicely illustrated, 6-page article about the legend, the Pushkin play and Tchaikovsky's working of it.

But I was surprised at the appearance of empty seats after Act I, and even more at the audience's discourtesy in rushing out before the final curtain calls had even started.  That was the pattern at all four performances I saw.

The next evening: Don Pasquale - an attractive, conventional set (curving stairway, high French doors), the last of many productions for the Met by 78-year-old Otto Schenk, proved well suited to a very cheeky, highly energetic performance by Anna Netrebko as Norina. She was undoubtedly the star of the show: lithe, provocative and sexy.

But it had not begun well, with its spirited overture emasculated by excessive rallentandi and belaboured melodic turns. The conductor was Maurizio Benini; his idiosyncrasies were less apparent as the evening progressed, and he was more at home in Luisa Miller the next evening. Norina's true love, Ernesto, was sung by splendid Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez.  Simone Alaimo and Mariusz Kwiecien were well matched as Pasquale and Malatesta.

Opera magazine's review by professional debunker Martin Bernheimer dealt it predictable blows. One of his famous epithet-rich sentences: “Netrebko... treated the scene as her personal camping ground [get it?]. ... she preened, purred, twitched, gesticulated, cackled, grimaced, beamed, waved to the crowd, wiggled her toes, danced, pranced, twirled, somersaulted, flashed a lot of bare leg, sang brightly and loudly, breathed heavily and mushed the Italian text. Almost everyone adored her.” And I did too.

Luisa Miller was on the next evening, Verdi's 1849 opera, two before the three middle period masterpieces. I had really hoped to hear Neil Shicoff as Rodolfo, but he, ailing, was replaced by Eduardo Villa. The latter, though hardly a fit as the romantic hero, both on account of rotund shape and wooden gestures, sang beautifully. Neither was the nice-looking Stephen West particularly convincing as Wurm, one of the vilest crooks in the opera business. Though we were told Veronica Villaroel was off-colour, I wouldn't have known; she sang Luisa with rather more spine than some of Verdi's put-upon women: there was a touch of attractive steel in her voice. Luisa's father, a baritone role, was sung very sympathetically by Carlos Alvarez.

If I had found Benini a bit affected in Don Pasquale, in Luisa Miller there was bite and energy in the chorus and orchestra, and proper Verdi muscularity. It was a traditional, realistic staging; a Swiss mountain backdrop, authentic, dark Swiss timber interiors.  It was directed by Elijah Moshinsky, with powerfully realised confrontations involving an Othello-like predicament.

The opera contains some beautiful music, but is probably flawed by plot implausibility, never mind its origin in Schiller's Kabale und Liebe. For example, why did Rodolfo need to take real poison at the dénouement when a fake would have got what he wanted? But how many operas would reduce to a half-hour if characters employed a bit of common sense?

London was the next stop, mainly to visit old friends, but also to see Eugene Onegin at Covent Garden, then to Paris to see my first live Rameau - Platée at the old Opéra, the Palais Garnier, and Saariaho's new opera, Adriana Mater at the Bastille, before heading to Vienna for Tristan und Isolde. That and a swing through Germany will be covered in the next instalment.