Dexter delivered Rigoletto (Oct. 31, 1977) and Don Pasquale (Dec. 7, 1978) from timeworn practice as he had Aïda and Le Prophète—with the same disappointing results. The striking central element of the unit set for Rigoletto was a tall, decaying tower that revolved from scene to scene and pushed most of the action downstage to the sector Dexter favored. The advantage to voice and gesture, no doubt welcomed by Sherrill Milnes, Ileana Cotrubas, and Plácido Domingo, was offset by the loss of playing space and the profusion of decoration. The mise-en-scène “seemed almost incompetent in the way it tamed what should be a stirring drama.” Don Pasquale, Beverly Sills’s Met swan song, was conceived, said its director, as “a charming offering to her,” transposed to the Edwardian era, whose fashion “would suit her well” (Times, Dec. 3, 1978). The song this late in the soprano’s career rang somewhat brittle. Desmond Heeley confected the outline of a valentine as an inner proscenium; Dexter should have had second thoughts about converting the opera buffa into a drawing-room comedy. His Don Carlo (Feb. 5, 1979) was enriched by the restoration of the opening scene in the forest of Fontainebleau, whatever Dexter’s objections to the flamboyant details forced upon him. Levine led a cast dominated by Nicolai Ghiaurov’s Philip. This Don Carlo would be the last of Reppa’s schematic decors. It would also be the end of the line for Met house designers.11
FIGURE 34. Dialogues des Carmélites, act 1, scene 1, 1977 (James Heffernan; courtesy Metropolitan Opera Archives)
Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd, Dexter’s return to the twentieth century, was an unqualified hit. The director employed the stage elevators to smashing effect for the HMS Indomitable, designed to disclose the harsh life of late-eighteenth-century seamen, on the one hand, and the stacking of the ship’s multiple decks as she is prepared for battle, on the other. The choreography of the large ensemble spoke to the class divide between officers and crew, the moral dilemma of Captain Vere (Peter Pears), the seraphic innocence of Billy (Richard Stilwell), and “the Lucifer-like beauty, sorrow, and passion” of the evil Claggart (James Morris). The production has been revived six times, most recently in 2011–12. Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a political satire rooted in the cabaret tradition. How well it weathered repotting was up for debate. For Manuela Hoelterhoff, “the work [did] not carry in a place the size of the Met. It needs an intimate setting for dramatic effect.” Schonberg, who had no problem with the fit of the piece to the big stage, was tough on the text and the score: “It is a pretty dated example of dialectical materialism, and to these ears much of the music is dated.” When Stratas sang the lilting “Moon of Alabama,” all else was beside the point. Levine and Dexter stuck with Weill and Brecht through twenty-seven performances in two successive seasons; Mahagonny came back in 1983–84 to dismal box office, and then in 1995–96, when it did much better.12
The Bartered Bride (Oct. 25, 1978) and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Oct. 12, 1979) were revivals long overdue. The production of Smetana’s comedy, panned by most critics (Andrew Porter called it a “disaster,” a “horrid travesty”), beat a hasty retreat. Dexter and Svoboda, ever distrustful of the pretty, had drained the work of its considerable charm. The superb diction of Stratas, Vickers, and Nicolai Gedda exposed a second deadly flaw: the distortions of an English translation hell-bent on matching the stressed syllables of the Czech original. Entführung was a down payment on Levine’s pledge to bring lesser-known Mozart operas into the active repertoire. The Abduction from the Seraglio, as it was known in its English-language introduction, had been dropped after only five performances in 1946–47. Where Donald Oenslager’s filigree décors were a riot of color, Jocelyn Herbert insisted on simple lines and a subdued palette. Bass Kurt Moll’s Osmin left the strained Belmonte and Constanze of Gedda and Edda Moser in the dust. The production has resurfaced six times; in 2007–08, Matthew Polenzani and Diana Damrau excelled in the difficult principal roles.13
Among rarities not signed by Dexter, although staged under his baleful eye as director of production, two succeeded in restoring major works to the repertoire. The three one-act operas of Puccini’s Il Trittico (Dec. 19, 1975), reunited for the first time since 1920, finally caught on despite uninspiring first casts and Reppa’s just serviceable décors. When Scotto took on the three contrasting soprano parts, the house went wild. I Puritani (Feb. 25, 1976) was on the bill for the first time in more than half a century. We have not seen as serendipitous a quartet as Sutherland, Pavarotti, Milnes, and Morris in the four revivals of Bellini’s opera, the last in 2006–07. Three showcases for reigning stars were borrowed from San Francisco. Massenet provided Esclarmonde, in its company premiere, for Sutherland and Thaïs (Jan. 18, 1978) for Sills, and Donizetti La Favorita (Feb. 21, 1978) for Verrett and Pavarotti. Esclarmonde proved the most intriguing of the three, if only for Beni Montresor’s handsome décors and the diva’s bravura. Thaïs, a stronger piece, no longer suited Sills’s increasingly fragile instrument; it suffered too from a tacky production. Verrett, whose Leonora had thrilled a Carnegie Hall audience three years earlier, was off form in the disappointing La Favorita.14
The remaining stagings, all subject to Dexter’s oversight, redecorated the familiar. Only Frederica von Stade’s Cherubino stood out in a middle-of-the-road Le Nozze di Figaro (Nov. 20, 1975), revived just once. Manon Lescaut (March 17, 1980) wallowed in naturalism, while its lovers, Scotto and Domingo, disported themselves in erotic play, defying the Met’s then prudish standard of decency. More to the point, as Dexter groused, director Gian Carlo Menotti allowed them “to indulge in every acting cliché that has been used since Thespis.” Undistinguished sets, borrowed from Chicago as a stopgap for the tattered 1951 La Bohème, appeared on home screens across the country in the introductory “Live from the Met” telecast (Feb. 23, 1977). Three new productions took a step or two beyond mere redecoration. Un Ballo in maschera (Feb. 4, 1980) was staged by Elijah Moshinsky; he credited Dexter with the idea of setting the action in colonial Boston at the outbreak of the American Revolution, and not in the late seventeenth-century, as specified in the libretto. Peter Wexler designed boxy, minimalist sets; Peter J. Hall modeled costumes on the portraits of John Singleton Copley. The reception of the cast headed by Pavarotti was ecstatic, of the production’s historico-political reading mixed. There was much to admire in the new Lohengrin (Nov. 14, 1976): the rough river bank, the monumental castle, the acting, and Levine’s conducting, which one reviewer called his “finest hour.” Tannhäuser (Dec. 22, 1977) respected the composer’s scenic and narrative markings to a degree rare in contemporary stagings; exacting Wagnerite Andrew Porter called it “a 20th-century landmark.” For the stupendous finale of act 2, Schneider-Siemssen’s tiered oval set, Schenk’s dynamic blocking, and Levine’s command of Wagner’s arching ensemble joined in a protracted moment of tension that those who were present have not forgotten. Equally memorable, but for the wrong reason, was yet another San Francisco export, Der Fliegende Holländer (March 3, 1979), designed and directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. Its premiere set off a volley of jeers and boos from New York’s normally respectful audience. Ponnelle wrapped the action within the dream of a minor character, the Steersman. José Van Dam, the beleaguered protagonist, was alone able to free himself from the convoluted apparatus.15
TABLE 16 Metropolitan Opera Premieres, 1975–76 to 1979–80
Between 1975 and 1980, the remapping of the repertoire progressed much as Levine had forecast. He added four twentieth-century European masterworks to the company’s standard rep. The reintroduction of neglected works succeeded as well, witness the persistence of I Puritani and Il Trittico. Die Entführung auf dem Serail paved the way for the lesser-known Mozart operas.
BLISS AND LEVINE, 1980–1985
A tragic augury ushered in the blighted 1980–81 season. On July 23, the young freelance violinist Helen Hagnes disappeared during the intermission of a Berlin Ballet performance. She was found the next morning at the bottom of an air shaft. The trial of
the twenty-one-year-old Met stagehand Craig Crimmins, the tabloids’ “phantom of the Metropolitan Opera,” ended in a guilty verdict on the charge of attempted rape and murder. In September 1981, he was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison. The lurid story kept the Met in the news for the many weeks of the investigation and court proceedings, and the fact that the accused was a company employee drinking on the job made the publicity that much more damaging.
Again in the news that summer were angry talks between the Met and the orchestra. As management increased its offer, the sticking point remained the maximum number of performances to which the musicians were obligated each week. And here neither side would budge. The players asserted that “the demands on their artistry were so heavy that many of them suffered from severe physical and psychological problems,” to which Levine, professing “sympathy for the players’ feeling,” equivocated, “we all would love for some of the pressure to be taken off our schedules. But all work has a certain amount of pressure attached to it” (Times, July 20, 1980). Negotiations were declared failed on the September 2 deadline and rehearsals were suspended. Taplin told the board repeatedly that giving in on the four-performance week would mean “a return to ‘red ink.’ ” (Sept. 12, 1980). Opening night was canceled. To the subsequent threat of junking the entire season, the union responded, “It’s the classic story of the boy who cried wolf” (Times, Sept. 24). This was, after all, the third time in five years that Bliss had issued the same ultimatum. But the Met was not bluffing. On September 30, the season was canceled. The players found themselves caught between wealthy patrons who held that instrumentalists were overpaid as it was for fewer than sixteen hours of work per week and stagehands who considered the musicians spoiled rotten by the cushy terms of their employment, particularly as contrasted with their own. Bliss and company feared that a prolonged delay or, worse, the cancellation of the season would result in the same loss of subscriptions that had followed on the 1969 postponement. Eleven years later, the 16 percent drop had not been fully recovered. Talks resumed in early October at the urging of President Carter. At this point, Volpe, now director of operations, entered the labor fray once again. He later quoted Bliss as saying, “If we don’t get this dispute settled in a week or two, we’ll just close the place down and start another company from scratch.” And himself as responding, “Tony, you can’t do that. You don’t have that right. . . . The Met doesn’t belong to you and the board. It belongs to everyone who works here and the public who loves and pays for opera.” Volpe was instrumental in brokering the four-year deal that included hiring subs for the uncovered services, a frugal solution acceptable to both Bliss and Levine, and annual pay hikes of 8 to 9 percent. Players and choristers conceded four free rehearsal hours in exchange for the four-performance week. The two-month delay deprived operaphiles of the pleasure of hearing Caballé’s Turandot put the three riddles to Pavarotti’s Calaf and of The Queen of Spades scheduled for Domingo and Anna Tomowa-Sintow.16
The “broken” season opened at last on December 10 with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” played and sung by the pacified orchestra and chorus in plain view on the stage, Marilyn Horne and Judith Blegen the soloists. On January 15, the administrative shake-up long in the works was made official: Bliss became general manager in title as well as fact. Dexter’s demotion to “production adviser” was sealed. In William Rockefeller’s words, he would “continue to stage new productions, oversee the revivals of his old ones, and advise on dramatic matters. He is relieved of administrative duties that will be assumed by the technical department he created.” Phoebe Berkowitz was named executive stage director. Three assistant managers were also appointed, Volpe for operations, Marilyn Shapiro for development and public affairs, and Joan Ingpen for artistic administration, a position she had held at Covent Garden and at the Paris Opéra. Levine seemed content: “We have the right structure now. John’s [Dexter] work is necessary, but decisions were harder to make. Tony doesn’t veto things on artistic grounds. If he and I don’t agree on a production, we don’t do it” (Times, Jan. 17, 1982).
Parade, February 20, 1981; La Bohème, December 14, 1981
The first of Dexter’s stagings as production adviser was Parade, a triptych of Eric Satie’s ballet, Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, and Maurice Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges. The Times waxed hyperbolic over Dexter’s program of a modernist ballet and two rare, astringent operas: “Every so often, and sometimes none too soon, something happens at the opera to justify its existence and restore faith in its present and future.” The collaboration between painter David Hockney and veteran conductor Manuel Rosenthal (student and friend of Ravel) was a happy one. Dramatic and visual motifs laid bare the World War I origins of the three works: the 1917 premieres of Satie’s ballet and of the Apollinaire play on which Poulenc based his opera and the start of Ravel’s engagement with L’Enfant et les sortilèges. The run sold out. The other new production of the season, originally tagged for Dexter, eventually staged by Colin Graham and designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch, turned out to be a routine La Traviata (March 17, 1981).17
La Bohème was the splashiest of the five new productions of 1981–82. The 1948 tweaking of the garret aside, in its first half-century at the Met, Puccini’s opera had been clothed in the same anonymous, utilitarian décors entrusted to staff directors who were there to remind principals and chorus of the standard blocking. When in 1952, at long last, La Bohème earned a new production, it was again on a modest scale. So it came as a surprise when Zeffirelli’s La Bohème burst forth as one of the biggest spectacles ever mounted at the Met, the touchstone for the megaproductions that were to become the company’s norm. The first-night audience roared for close to a minute when the curtain rose on act 2. The street corner occupied by a neighborhood establishment with an awning and a few tables had bulged into a three-level Parisian intersection, jammed with 280 Christmas revelers, a myriad of façades, a wide staircase, a ground-level café, and a terrace above. The toy-seller Parpignol had a pony cart, Musetta and her aged suitor a horse-drawn cab. At the climax, what seemed like all Paris was on parade. Some of Zeffirelli’s inventions had strong narrative purpose. The little balcony off the garret was just right for private moments: Rodolfo’s longing for Mimì, Colline’s “addio” to his overcoat. The upstage area of act 3 provided a plausible vantage from which Mimì could overhear Rodolfo’s agonizing forecast of her impending death. But more often, the size and complexity of the designs distanced spectators from the characters. For John Rockwell the sets were made-to-order “for people who come wanting to applaud the scenery.” Zeffirelli responded by calling Rockwell a “jerk.” He proclaimed his own production “one of the most beautiful, honest, successful” in Met history. The décor was certainly beautiful, and if success is measured by longevity, Zeffirelli’s boast was prescient: the lofty garret, the melancholy customs gate, and especially the riotous street scene continue to draw cheers more than thirty years and more than four hundred performances later. As for an honest representation of Puccini’s “vie de bohème,” that is another matter.18
FIGURE 35. La Bohème, act 2, 1981 (James Heffernan; courtesy Metropolitan Opera Archives)
Other Stagings
With La Bohème, Dexter’s battle for modern stagings was lost. Two years later, he was still licking his wounds: “Leave it to Franco to celebrate the 19th century—it’s easy. The 20th is bloody difficult.” Less than a fortnight before the opening of the Puccini sensation, Dexter, once again collaborating with Hockney, had laid down a final challenge to the literal, expensive, overblown style he loathed. Stravinsky (Dec. 3, 1981) was another modernist triptych: a ballet, Le Sacre du printemps, and two vocal works, the opera-ballet-pantomime Le Rossignol (in Russian) and the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (in Latin). This time, unlike Parade, the three components of the omnibus were mismatched. Even Andrew Porter, who thought Stravinsky “a big, serious achievement” and “a landmark in New York’s operatic history
,” found it “exhausting.” The choreography of Jean-Pierre Bonnefous did little for Le Sacre du printemps and Dexter’s treatment of Oedipus Rex was largely static. Levine’s direction of the difficult scores and Hockney’s enchanting chinoiserie for Le Rossignol garnered what praise there was. Among the remaining new productions of 1981–82, only Hayden Griffin’s elegant sliding panels for Così fan tutte (Jan. 29) mined the less-is-more Dexter-Hockney vein. John Cox’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Feb. 15) banished comic shtick, losing a good bit of the comic along the way; décor and staging took a backseat to the virtuosity of Horne’s Rosina. The new Les Contes d’Hoffmann (March 8) gave Zeffirelli a run for his money. Schenk and Schneider-Siemssen’s extravagant weave of the realistic and the fantastic attracted the highest average capacity of the season. Spalanzani’s laboratory, animated by the body parts of airborne automata, gave the audience entrée into Hoffmann’s delusions; the Venetian campo reeked with the decadence of Giulietta and Dappertutto; Antonia’s bourgeois sitting room dissolved into the nightmarish realm of Dr. Miracle. Conductor Riccardo Chailly’s excellent debut promised a company career more extensive than just eight performances of Offenbach’s opera.19
Grand Opera: The Story of the Met Page 34
