Review Met Operas les Pãƒâªcheurs De Perles Ny Times
Review: A Precious Harvest in 'The Pearl Fishers' at the Met
When word gets around, the sleeper hitting of the Metropolitan Opera flavor could be the new production of Bizet's "Les Pêcheurs de Perles" ("The Pearl Fishers") that opened on Thursday nighttime, a New year's day's Eve gala result. When a major firm presents a new staging of a repertory staple, like Verdi's "Otello" or, for that matter, Bizet's "Carmen," the creative team is under pressure to come up with something fresh, to make a statement that stands out. With a lesser-known work like "The Pearl Fishers," generally accounted an highly-seasoned only flawed opera (patches of soaring music, a justly famous duet, colorful choral writing, but an uneven score with a stilted libretto), the challenge is different and more liberating: The production must brand a case for the disregarded opera, must bring out its riches without refashioning its essence.
The British director and filmmaker Penny Woolcock, working with a dream cast (featuring the soprano Diana Damrau, the tenor Matthew Polenzani and the baritone Mariusz Kwiecien), the great Met chorus and the formidable conductor Gianandrea Noseda, delivers in this sensitive and insightful production, originally created by the English National Opera in London, where it was beginning presented in 2010. The only previous performances of the opera at the Met were a century ago, in 1916.
Bizet was 25 in 1863 when the manager of the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris offered him a libretto for "The Pearl Fishers," a makeshift endeavor with a plot steeped in Orientalist exotica and propped upward by a couple of implausible coincidences. Fix in Ceylon (Sri Lanka, today) in ancient times, the story tells of the fishermen Nadir and Zurga, who have been friends since childhood. We soon find out that, as young men, they both fell for an unattainable woman, Leila, a priestess of the Hindu god of creation, Brahma. Rather than compete for her, they pledged to forget her and affirm their lasting friendship. When the opera opens, years have gone by. Nadir arrives unexpectedly, to the please of Zurga.
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Excerpt: 'The Pearl Fishers'
Diana Damrau and Mariusz Kwiecien sing an extract from Penny Woolcock's new production of Bizet'south "Les Pêcheurs de Perles" ("The Pearl Fishers").
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In a bold stroke, Ms. Woolcock, who made her Met debut in 2008 directing John Adams's "Md Atomic," opens this production by bringing the title of the opera to life with theatrical magic that transforms the stage into a murky surface area beneath the sea. Backside a scrim with video projections (by 59 Productions) and lighting effects (by Jen Schriever), 3 actors dangling from unseen wires (costumed by Kevin Pollard as traditional pearl fishers), swim and dart about in the waters searching for oysters in the bounding main bed.
Ms. Woolcock'due south updating of "The Pearl Fishers" works beautifully. She places the story in an unspecified Asian locale during modern times. When the scrim lifts, nosotros meet a coastal shantytown with multilevel, rickety wood platforms and a depression dock with lapping water at the shoreline. (Dick Bird designed the sets.) The choristers portray the villagers, wearing a mix of traditional and modern clothing, some in saris and sandals, some in trousers and T-shirts, all in shades of world and rust. There are people reading newspapers or niggling with electric lights. But others are occupied with activities that have gone on unchanged for centuries: Women weave flowers into garlands; men burn incense; fishermen mend their nets. This could exist a village in Bangladesh or Indonesia today.
In Ms. Woolcock'south reading of the opera, the sea is a major character. Though the fishermen depend upon it for their livelihoods, they fall victim to its power. In the opening chorus, the people voice their fears of the ocean while singing rituals to chase away evil spirits. A priestess comes amidst them to pray for good fortune. That young woman is (you guessed information technology) Leila.
Zurga prods his townspeople into urgent business organisation: A new village headman must be chosen. Mr. Kwiecien is an platonic Zurga. Singing with burnished audio and lyrical richness, he looks like a natural leader, handsome, confident and something of an operator. Many people hold up ready-made photos of Zurga, which suggests a stealth campaign has been underway. Chosen past acclaim, Zurga makes clear what this means in a few phrases Mr. Kwiecien delivers with cagey intensity. "And so, you are giving me complete dominance?" he asks. Yes, the villagers assure him.
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Mr. Polenzani makes a poignantly believable Nadir, who arrives presently after the election of his sometime friend. Nadir has secretly followed Leila to the hamlet. First, though, he reunites with Zurga during the great duet of friendship, "Au fond du temple saint."
In this slice, the men reaffirm their promise to avoid Leila. To young men like Nadir and Zurga, a bail of friendship would have been a life-defining attachment. Yet, from the way this well-known duet is staged here, the strains of such a pledge are made apparent.
At first the men sing from separate sides of the stage, each lost in memories of the attracting Leila. Merely as they turn toward each other, they bring together together. Their agog, soaring performance, supported by the glowing playing Mr. Noseda drew from the orchestra, brought fresh urgency to the familiar music.
Later in this human activity, when Nadir is alone, he confronts the truth in the enraptured aria "Je crois entendre encore." Despite his pledge, Nadir did for a time have an illicit romance with Leila; he yet yearns for her. Mr. Polenzani sang this haunting aria of remembrance with wondrous lyrical tenderness while conveying the music's gently swaying gait. And if you lot think it's impossible for a tenor to cap phrases of a dreamy aria with melting, pianissimo high notes, report to the Met to hear Mr. Polenzani demonstrate how this is done superlatively.
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Ms. Damrau brings bright coloratura agility, radiant sound and charisma galore to the role of Leila. Her intensity comes with risks, since Leila is a virgin priestess who must keep her vows on hurting of death, an edict enforced by the high priest Nourabad (Nicolas Testé, a fine bass-baritone), who accompanies her. In Deed 2, when Leila and Nadir, having reunited, sing an impassioned, fraught duet, Ms. Damrau's body twitches with spasms as her character'south suppressed longings flare-up out. At times her gestures were a little histrionic. Still, Ms. Woolcock makes explicit what's taking identify by having Nadir unwrap the layers of saris and skirts that Leila wears. And Ms. Damrau sang dazzlingly.
The lovers are discovered and condemned to death. At the finish of the act, a violent storm breaks out, sending the villagers into peals of anguished singing. Video images suggest a tsunami-like drench, a vivid reminder of the 2004 convulsion in the Indian Ocean that caused tens of thousands of deaths in, amidst other countries, Sri Lanka.
In Deed 3, Zurga, who has the authority to finish the death sentence, confronts his conflicted feelings in an intense aria that provides Mr. Kwiecien one of his finest moments at the Met to appointment. Drenched by the storm, Zurga hides out in his office with reams of documents stacked upwardly along an entire wall. He grabs a beer from a refrigerator and broods as he realizes that neither Nadir nor Leila truly love him. That'south what he craves from both.
Mr. Noseda conducts this oftentimes-criticized score equally if every moment of the music matters deeply. The production, using a scholarly edition, hews to the original ending. After Zurga distracts the avenging villagers past setting their houses afire, he allows Leila and Nadir to flee. Lone, he awaits his fate — his people will soon realize what he has done. Bizet was not convinced that this catastrophe was effective. If only he could have seen this production.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/arts/music/review-a-precious-harvest-in-the-pearl-fishers-at-the-met.html
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