Freni Gala

 

When I interviewed Mirella Freni, she stated categorically that Sunday's Gala would not be her Met farewell. Having attended the Gala, I suspect that she told a fib, intended to hold at bay the great emotion of the occasion.

Consider the selections she sang, all of a valedictory nature: "Adieu, notre petite table" from Massenet's Manon (an opera she never sang in New York, so a gutsy choice); Adriana Lecouvreur's "Io son l'umile ancella," an artist's acknowledgment of humility and evanescence; Johanna's farewell to the forests from Tchaikovsky's Orleanskaya deva; and Tatyana and Onegin's leave-taking from Yevgeny Onegin. And that encore: "Non ti scordar di me." Yes, opera teems with farewells, but this is stacking the deck, wouldn't you say?

Before turning to the concert itself, vilaine fille begs to differ with sister Sieglinde's characterization of Freni's artistry and career: "understated delicacy," "relatively placid." Tutti i gusti son gusti, of course, but listen to Freni's Nile Scene duet with Piero Cappuccilli from the Karajan Aida, and name a soprano who more powerfully conveys Aida's anguish. Watch Freni's shattering film of Madama Butterfly. Check out her Manon Lescaut with Domingo and Sinopoli, a performance that oozes sex and despair. Sample Act IV of Muti's Ernani (not widely loved, but a vilaine fille desert-island set) and thrill to the ferocity of Freni's Elvira, a fiery daughter of Aragon to the last!

There are many varieties of intensity in opera, and not all of them involve doing a lap dance on stage, behaving like a harpie off stage, or leaving a smear of filth in one's wake. Indeed, vilaine fille is an old-fashioned girl—a radical, in fact—who invites readers to go back to opera's roots, the preface to Jacopo Peri's Euridice. Peri posits that opera's recitar cantando ("to act/recite by means of singing") is cosa mezzana ("an in-between thing"), flanked by parlare ordinario ("ordinary speech") and melodia del cantare ("sung melody").

I find that Freni approaches this ideal of recitar cantando in her repertoire. She doesn't gurgle and coo, or carry on like a chipmunk on crystal meth, or peck at texts, or warble on in bovine indifference to words, or enact kitschy parodies of old-time divas.* Freni acts by means of song, her gestures stylized and essential, her words clear and brimming with emotion, her vocal line flowing and meaningfully shaped. "I like everything to be natural when I sing," she told me, bringing to mind another great Renaissance ideal: sprezzatura.

* [To those who prize the aesthetics of calamity, vilaine fille says: Whatever gets you through the night. But we hew to the simple pleasures of old-time Florence: ancient letters, assassination, butt-f*cking.]

Freni gave the most intense and fully realized operatic portrayal that vilaine fille has ever witnessed, in Eugene Onegin. I saw her Tatyana in both New York and San Francisco, and her Letter Scene always brought on waves upon waves of goosebumps: for the sheer beauty of her sound, for its enveloping warmth, and for the way she made the very air in the theatre quiver with the intoxicating force of Tatyana's passion.

Twice, during Freni's 1992 Met Onegins under Seiji Ozawa, I nearly blacked out, because I dared not breathe when she sang the great melody:

Kto ti: moi angel li khranitel,
Ili kovarni iskusitel…

There was a presence in the theatre: the love welling up from Tatyana's soul, in which everything in the house seemed suspended. (Freni's lovely recording of Onegin under James Levine captures some of this magic.) And the way she ended the scene, spinning around with her arms outstretched, as if Tatyana were willing her body to feel the same vertiginous enchantment as her soul. It was simple, without gimmickry, and truer than truth. I have never been more moved, before or since.

Anyway, on to the Gala. I generally find these "official" occasions lackluster in musical terms, but this Gala was a happy exception. Once again Maestro Levine led the Met Orchestra in The Bartered Bride overture, and once again his magnificent band stunned with their virtuosic articulation. (The Smetana is getting stale, though. Hint: Ruslan, baby. Ruslan!)

After the roaring ovation that greeted her, Freni was choked up for the Manon aria, but she made the small scale of the performance work, with velvety phrases aplenty to go along with others that were raspy with emotion. I loved Frederica von Stade's "Connais-tu le pays?" There is now a slight quaver to her tone, and you have to listen more closely to hear that lit-from-within quality, but she spun prodigiously long, graceful, and tapered lines. (I believe she was wearing the very gown that you see in the photo.)

Though he had some trouble getting to his high notes, Salvatore Licitra was in ringing, juicy voice and on very good behavior for the "Improvviso" from Andrea Chénier. What a curiously inconsistent singer he is: I found him slovenly and unsteady in Tosca, but on Sunday he sounded like he had the chops to become the finest tenor of his era.

The Mefistofele prologue is an all-time vilaine fille favorite, and it was the thrill of a lifetime to hear Maestro Levine's spacious and majestic reading of it. (Honestly, why no encore?) This has been a fabulous year for the Met Children's Chorus under Elena Doria: They alone redeemed a ghastly Carmen that I attended, and they vied for honors in the magnificent Otello that opened the season. They were beyond superb in the tricky harmonies, sudden dynamic shifts, and rapid, patter-like verses that Boito wrote for his cherubim, and they stood proud and still like seasoned pros. Bravissimi!

Given the leathery barking with which he has regaled us of late, James Morris's relatively fresh tone and handsomely sculpted phrases came as a pleasant surprise, though he made a sexless, charmless Adversary. (Next time: d'Arcangelo, Pape, or Relyea, s'il vous plaît.) Sadly, the adult ladies of the chorus sound just as bad in the house as they do over the air.

"Cielo e mar": Heaven help me, if James Levine were conducting, I would listen to La Gioconda (not a vilaine fille favorite) every day of the year. And no one today looks better in a tux than Marcello Giordani. His support tends to collapse when he shifts downward, and the "refashioned" top notes are tight, but the rest of his voice is gorgeous, and his pianissimo phrases are pure poetry. For this I adore him.

The two Adriana Lecouvreur excerpts were, for me, the weakest part of the program. Freni still had a big lump in her throat and broke some phrases awkwardly, and there seemed to be zero chemistry between her and Licitra.

Part II: Tchaikovsky. Freni turned in a stronger performance of "Prostite vi" from Orleanskaya deva when I heard her in Washington, doubtless because she was swept up in the excitement of a fully staged show. Still, her singing during the Gala was impassioned, grand in scale, and secure. She did not sound like a singer ready to retire.

The program closed with Act III of Yevgeny Onegin, another one of vilaine fille's favorite operas, starring three singers for whom she has near-unconditional admiration: Freni, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Robert Lloyd. Hvorostovsky was not in his best voice—the big climactic phrases seemed to cost him an excruciating amount of effort—but for brooding glamour no one can touch him. Lloyd sang Prince Gremin's aria stupendously well, with his final note (a low E-flat, is it?) firm, resonant, and prolonged. He received a huge ovation.

And Freni—now I'm crying again, because I will miss her so—was, as ever, an utterly lovable Tatyana, stern in her appeal to Onegin's pride and honor, heartbreakingly honest in her avowal of love for the cad, and wrenching in her determination to stay with the good and decent man she has married. Freni transposed down the very last note but was otherwise in effulgent form. Through the wonder of art, she and Hvorostovsky, whose combined age is well over 100, became the 26-year-old Onegin and the still younger Tatyana.

Marcello Giordani sang a rapturously tender and elegant introduction to "Non ti scordar di me," and Freni sang the refrain. It sits in the middle of the voice, and Freni's radiant tone, melting legato, and heart overflowing with love made her sound like a singer in the flush of youth. But Mr. Volpe made his speech and presentation, and the curtain came down, probably for the last time on Mirella Freni in New York.

Cara Mirella, c'è sempre un nido nel nostro cuor per te ! E grazie.

Comments

[Zoe]

I used to be one of the children performers at the Met Children's Chorus under Elena Doria. Now it is almost 18 years later, and I am now 28 years old, baal'teshuva Lubavich, and I am fascinated by your site. Would you believe that one hour ago, I looked up Elena Doria on the web because I had the intense intuition that I am supposed to return to the opera scene, if it is Hashem's will. I am in my last year of law school now, but the experience from the MET has never left me, and it is so engraved in me that I am considering "coming home" to either work or perform at the opera house if it is still a path that is open to me. This is how I found your site. I will read more, but I believe that I can learn something from you.

[sfmike]

Thanks for confirming what I also heard in San Francisco some years back, the miraculous Mirella Freni as Tatyana in "Eugene Onegin." She was much too old to be playing a 16-year-old girl and yet you believed every second of it and by the end of the Letter Scene I wasn't sure I was going to be able to make it through the whole opera.

The problem, of course, is that once you've experienced that kind of perfection in a role, any subsequent production with different performers is always going to feel a bit inadequate, something I realized when San Francisco put on a Eurotrash version of "Onegin" last season with a young, dreary Russian soprano.

Brava to Mirella. She's one of the few singers of any sort (Carlo Bergonzi and Alfredo Kraus are the only others that come to mind) who knew how to take care of her voice long past the usual expiration date. We definitely are not worthy.