Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos
Urmana, Damrau, S. Graham, Villars, Maltman, T. Allen,
et al.
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Petrenko,
Moshinsky/L. Feldman
24 September 2005 - Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York City
NEW YORK — Diana Damrau smiled, giggled and pranced around the stage as her brilliant coloratura filled the Metropolitan Opera House. She needed only a few notes to show she has a big future.
The 34-year-old German soprano made her Met debut
Saturday as saucy Zerbinetta in the first performance this season of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, and when she finished her big
second-act aria, "Grossmächtige Prinzessin," she was rewarded with a 70-second cheering ovation.
Her sound is big, comes off as effortless and makes sparks in a role that requires considerable vocal agility. She has an expressive face and acts with nuance while making big motions visible to the entire auditorium. In a house where Natalie Dessay's Zerbinetta set a high standard in 1997 and 2003, Damrau carved her own impression into the role of the commedia dell'arte troupe leader moved by the plight of the Composer.
In Europe, where she made her opera debut in 2002, she has earned excellent reviews in roles ranging from the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte to Europa in Salieri's Europa riconosciuta at the reopening of Milan's Teatro alla Scala last December to Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto.
She is scheduled to make her Lyric Opera of Chicago debut as Zerbinetta in October 2006 and to sing Aithra in March and April 2007 as part of the Met's first staging since 1928 of Strauss's Die ägyptische Helena.
Hers was just one of several performances to savor.
Violeta Urmana (Ariadne) and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham (the Composer) sang their roles at the Met for the first time, and tenor Jon Villars (Bacchus and the Tenor) made his Met debut.
Urmana, moving from mezzo to soprano parts, gave an endearing portrait of the princess who desires death after being abandoned by her lover, Theseus. Her voice did not have quite the soaring sumptuousness of Deborah Voigt, the Met's Ariadne of choice in the past decade, but she compensated by creating a certain pathos.
Graham was spectacular during the Prologue as a spectacle-wearing Composer, livid in her interplay with the Music Master, the elegant Thomas Allen, when she finds out her work is being ruined. The plot of librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal sets the action in the mansion of the richest man in Vienna, who sends his Major-Domo to announce that the Composer's opera will be performed simultaneously with the opera buffa in order to get the entertainment over before the evening fireworks begin.
Villars did the most he could with the difficult music Strauss composed for Bacchus. While his tone was bright, he bordered on bellowing at times and sounded strained. Baritone Christopher Maltman, also making his Met debut, sang promisingly and acted humorously as Harlekin. Bernard Fitch lacked the haughty and ironic Viennese inflection necessary for the Major-Domo's pronouncements.
Kirill Petrenko led a vibrant performance from the Met orchestra in a work that had been conducted exclusively at the house by James Levine since 1994, but he did not attain the breadth of color that Levine brings out.
Elijah Moshinsky's bright 1993 production, with sets and costumes by Michael Yeargan, was recorded on video two years ago with Voigt, Dessay and Susanne Mentzer, but it has not aired on television and has not been commercially released.
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