Reviews of OONY Les Huguenots Carnegie Hall April 23

Reviews of OONY Les Huguenots Carnegie Hall April 23, 2001

From The New York Times, Saturday, April 28, 2001 (scanned copy)
From The New York Times, Saturday, April 28, 2001 (text version)
From The Financial Times, April 26, 2001
From La Scena Musicale (Phillip Anson) April 25, 2001 (link)
From New York Magazine (May 14, 2001 issue) (added May 8, 2001)

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From The New York Times, Saturday, April 28, 2001

'Les Huguenots': Meyerbeer Claims a Place in the Present

By PAUL GRIFFITHS

Monday night's thrilling performance of "Les Huguenots," by Eve Queler and her Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall, was the first the city has heard in more than three decades. It was also one of the very few presentations the piece has received anywhere at all since the 1930's. Yet Meyerbeer's grand opera of 1836 was once essential repertory, right up there with the most popular Verdi and Mozart.

Ms. Queler's performance, in filling out the glory of the work, explained how it could have had such a strong, long hold on the stage. Why it vanished, too, became clear.

The glory here came most spectacularly in the fourth act. Valentine, the heroine, is alone in some chamber of her family's Paris house: the time is that of the wars of religion between Catholics and Huguenots. Now married to a Catholic, Nevers, she thinks longingly of her Huguenot lover Raoul in a superb aria, "Parmi les pleurs," that was outstandingly sung by Krassimira Stoyanova. Her control of line and intonation, her steady focus and her ability to sustain a tone of cool opulence were magnificent, and earned her an extended ovation from the eager audience.

Raoul appears, but hardly have the two begun to express their mutual desperation than Valentine's father, Saint-Bris, comes on with confederates to plot the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. The exclusively male music that follows is dark and oppressive — quite in contrast with the bulk of the first act, also for men's voices alone, where the tone is of jollity, but similar in showing Meyerbeer's command of the engineering of solos, ensembles and choruses in impressive sequences of mounting excitement. At one point Saint-Bris and three monks sing a doom-laden oath for low voices — a moment more pagan than Catholic, as Meyerbeer may have intended.

Later, when the stage is packed with men in full war cry, woodwinds come twirling down like stars out of the sky, providing just one instance of Meyerbeer's mastery of orchestral color as well as of vocal melody and the shaping of large resources. Ms. Queler realized the passage with great gusto.

Then the act ends with an impassioned duet for Valentine and Raoul. Marcello Giordani, in the latter role, wielded his immense voice with tremendous authority, accuracy and solidity. The air was filled with him. And Ms. Stoyanova gave as good as she got, so that the two of them together made one mighty and resolute identity. At the finish, the audience was justly in an uproar.

But not all of "Les Huguenots" is like this. The first act is largely made for latecomers — though nobody on this occasion would have wanted to miss Maria Zifchak's full and vivid portrayal of the page Urbain, a performance spun with a nice appreciation of the comedy in vocal bravado. Also, Valentine has very little to sing before the fourth act. The second and third acts have a different leading female role, that of the queen, Marguerite, sung here with big vitality and exultant, full- powered high notes by Olga Makarina.

Others taking part included Luiz- Ottavio Faria, appealing and human in the bass role of Marcel (regularly backed by extraordinary music for double-stopped solo cello and double bass); Kamel Boutros as Nevers, a supple baritone sounding aptly French; Gary Simpson as an implacable Saint-Bris; and, in smaller roles, the fine young tenor Justin Vickers and the elegant, expressive bass Jason Grant.

"Les Huguenots" failed by 20th- century standards of artistic wholeness. Perhaps in the 21st century it will come roaring back.

From The Financial Times, April 26, 2001

THE ARTS: Ordinary mortals fan the flames MUSIC NEW YORK:

Financial Times, Apr 26, 2001
By MARTIN BERNHEIMER

Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots is the grandest of grand operas, a mellifluous orgy of historical pomp and Gallic circumstance climaxing in the massacre of the Protestants on St Bartholomew's Day in 1572. This is one of those demi-masterpieces that every self-respecting music- lover knows, or at least knows about, even though few in the US can have seen it.

The sprawling period-piece hasn't been staged in New York since 1915, when Enrico Caruso led a stellar ensemble at the Metropolitan Opera. Les Huguenots fell into disfavour soon thereafter, because, we are told, comparable paragons - powerful singers equipped with exceptionally wide ranges and unusual flexibility - became extinct. Meyerbeer's much ado about much apparently couldn't survive with ordinary mortals.

Still, the flame his been kept flickering by a few zealots, most notably Eve Queler, director of the Opera Orchestra of New York. She ventured a concert performance of Les Huguenots back in 1969, with Beverly Sills as Marguerite de Valois, the florid Queen of Navarre. On Monday night at Carnegie Hall, Queler tried to make operatic lightning strike again.

The maestra is marvellously ambitious, a visionary and a dauntless dreamer. Unfortunately, she undermines her best intentions by serving as her own conductor. She beats time stolidly, pays little attention to matters of expressive nuance or dynamic subtlety, cues sporadically. Her left hand sometimes doesn't seem to know what her left hand is doing. Her loyal followers deserve better, and so do her lofty goals.

In the great passages of Les Huguenots - glorious arias and propulsive set pieces - Meyerbeer can score his points without much help from the podium. In the hack passages - romantic noodling and doodling accented with endless recycling of "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" - the composer needs all the help he can get. He got very little here. Wisely, Queler made a number of cuts, including the de rigueur ballet music. Still, this was a long evening, beginning at seven and ending nearly four and a half hours later.

The cast, as usual, combined promising newcomers with established stars. The central attraction had to be the sympathetic Sicilian tenor Marcello Giordani, who impersonated the noble Raoul de Nangis. It is an excruciatingly difficult role that crests at a top D, often hangs around C, and ideally requires equal parts ardour and grace. Giordani blasted the high notes with ringing force and reasonable ease, mustered plenty of ardour, and skimped a bit on the grace. He proved some time ago that he can sing softly, but didn't try much on this occasion. Still, he gave a remarkably stirring performance on his own fearless terms.

He was warmly complemented by the vibrant and willowy Krassimira Stoyanova, making her New York debut as the self-sacrificing Valentine. Even in evening attire, this Bulgarian soprano from the Vienna Staatsoper projected the character's devotion and desperation with wrenching pathos. She also pointed the text sensitively, and, though a bit light of voice, traced the arching cantilena elegantly. In the great love-duet of Act Four, she matched Giordani, tone for peeling tone, and one feared the sell-out crowd might never stop clapping.

The Russian divette Olga Makarina brought a sweet tweety-bird soprano to bear on the extravagant curlicues of Marguerite. Her agility was impressive, her sound pallid. Maria Zifchak, a young mezzo-soprano from Smithtown, New York, imbued the high and sprightly music of the page- boy Urbain with staggering verve. She's currently employed as a mere comprimaria at the Met. If there's any justice in the irrational world of opera, she won't be for long.

Replacing Dimitri Kavrakos, who was to have sung the pious soldier Marcel, a booming Brazilian basso named Luiz-Ottavio Faria served notice of a major talent, growling his plangent way to the subterranean depths. Portraying the Comte de Nevers, the Egyptian baritone Kamel Boutros was uncommonly suave. Portraying the Comte de St. Bris, the American baritone Gary Simpson was not.

Martin Bernheimer Copyright: The Financial Times Limited

NEW YORK Magazine, May 14, 2001 issue, p.74 (added May 8, 2001)

IN BRIEF:CLASSICAL MUSIC PETER G. DAVIS

HAS GIACOMO MEYERBEER'S TIME COME again? His French operas were extravagantly admired cultural monuments 150 years ago, and now they seem to be making a cautious comeback on European stages. That fact has not escaped the attention of the ever-enterprising Opera Orchestra of New York, which recently gave a concert performance of Les Huguenots at Carnegie Hall. lf OONY did not exactly put Meyerbeer back on his pedestal, it was still a grand occasion. After all, this opera, based on events leading up to the gruesome St. Bartholomews Day massacre of 1572, was designed as a total entertainment package for audiences of 1836. It has everything: historical melodrama on a huge scale, vocal fireworks, lavish spectacle, orchestral splendor, and endless divertissements, Meyerbeer may have been the Andrew Lloyd Webber of his day in that respect, but he delivered vastly superior goods.

Les Huguenots was a hot ticket at the Metropolitan from 1884 until 1914, and the casts during that gilded age were inyariably spectacular. The lack of singers able to meet Meyerbeer's requirements is one reason why his operas have languished, but OONY fielded a surprisingly strong septet. Marcello Giordani commanded all the treacherous high notes assigned to Raoul, the opera's most demanding role, and he even managed to bring a measure of courtly grace to his singing. Krassimira Stoyanova did all that and more as Valentine; here is another important OONY discovery who should be at the Met, a disciplined lyric soprano with an appealingly plangent texture and generous expressive instincts.

The rest of the cast was nearly as fine, especially Olga Makarina (Marguerite) and Maria Zifchak (Urbain), who sang their coloratura showpieces with precision and flair. It was also a treat to hear a true bass, Luiz-Ottavio Faria, toss off Marcel's arias, while Kamel Boutros (De Nevers) and Gary Simpson (St. Bris) made the most of their briefer opportunities. Eve Queler conducted an unusually full edition of the opera, capturing much of the score's color and grandeur in a stirring performance that surely won Meyerbeer new friends. They will be pleased to learn that even this neglected composer has his own official Website (www.meyerbeer.com), and it is well worth a visit.