Luisa Miller at the Met By Greg Sandow

Real Verdi voices were in short supply at this disappointing performance.

Verdi: Luisa Miller

Marina Mescheriakova (soprano) - Luisa
Neil Shicoff (tenor) - Rodolfo
Nikolai Putilin (baritone) - Miller
Hao Jiang Tian (bass) - Walter
Denyce Graves (mezzo-soprano) - Federica
Phillip Ens (bass) - Wurm

Orchestra and Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera
James Levine (conductor)
Elijah Moshinsky (director)

Friday 27 October 2001
Metropolitan Opera House, New York City

This empty performance, essentially a wasted evening at the Met, could lead one to melancholy thoughts. Years ago, if you produced an opera, you'd find singers who could actually sing it. With Luisa Miller, you might take special care, because it's a fragile work, with emotions that tend toward sorrow and despair instead of death-defying passion.

But Verdi voices now are scarce, and opera houses compromise. Only one singer in this new production could do the job — Neil Shicoff, who sang out freely, with a bright, clear, impassioned voice. You could fault his phrasing, which wasn't very graceful; you could giggle when he stuck an added cheesy high note at the end of his big aria, "Quando le sere al placido." But you couldn't fault his honesty, and when the audience went wild for "Quando le sere," it was right. That was the only moment in the long and dreary evening when real Italian opera came to life.

In the title role, Marina Mescheriakova at least sang prettily. But she never sounded like a real Verdi soprano (though she's been hyped as one, and was Leonora in the Met's ill-fated new Il trovatore in 2000). She simply doesn't have the proper vocal heft or bite, especially in the lower half of her range. Worse, she often crooned, which killed her anguished arias in the second act. To judge from the audience response (or lack of it), they fell completely flat.

As Luisa's humane and often gentle father, Nikolai Putilin wielded his titanic voice like a heavy weapon he had to grab with both hands. Sometimes he was a sympathetic presence, but when he tried to sing lyrically, as his role requires, the vocal weight he carried made him stagger out of tune. As Count Walter, Hao Jiang Tian couldn't produce the top of his range (too thin), or the bottom (shaky), or even the middle, where not a single note rang out with any resonance. Not even Denyce Graves had a happy night (in her first scene, she sounded parched), but a further catalogue of vocal problems would just get tiresome. At least Phillip Ens, as the brashly evil Wurm, created a disturbing character. His silent reaction to Luisa's agony in the second act, which he provokes, was frightening; he looked like he was feeding on her pain.

Under James Levine, the orchestra was sharp and careful. Director Elijah Moshinsky tried his best with a heavy, dark production, composing stage tableaus like paintings, the singers sensitively placed within them. But there was one peculiar moment: in this Italian opera, based on a Schiller play and originally set in Germany, young boys were playing cricket! The Met's press staff explained (as the program book did not) that Moshinsky had moved the scene to England — a pointless change, because nothing in the story requires it to take place anywhere specific. The cricket match didn't come across as local color; it was merely baffling.