Entering a New Era of Opera Stars

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

On Saturday, the Metropolitan Opera begins live broadcasts of select matinee performances into highdefinition movie screens across the country. The first broadcast will be of an abridged version of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” sung in English and directed by Julie Taymor. But the real ticket frenzy will most likely be for next week’s showing of Bellini’s “I Puritani.” Though it clocks in at more than three hours, the opera has one thing going for it: Anna Netrebko, the queen bee of a new era of opera heartthrobs.

These are the names and faces that will define a generation, just as Anna Moffo and Franco Corelli did in the 1950s and ’60s or Maria Callas did in the ’70s. Ms. Netrebko’s fellows in this illustrious group include the Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu, the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez, who is performing at the Met this season in “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” and the American baritone Nathan Gunn, who plays Papageno in the “The Magic Flute” (though not the English version).

At a time when opera is fighting with other forms of entertainment for attention, opera companies are more than willing to use singers’ beauty in marketing efforts, and even onstage. But can attractive leads actually renew the audience for opera? And what is the net effect on the art form?

“It is very hard, and it has always been very hard, for the mainstream press to find a hook” to talk about opera, the editor of Opera News, F. Paul Driscoll, said. “Looks are the easiest thing to understand.”

This was true even in the early 20th century. “If you look at the type of opera singers who made it on the cover of Life magazine in 1912,” he said, “it was people like Geraldine Farrar or Franco Corelli or Mary Garden [a Scottish soprano] –– people who were striking presences physically.”

But other opera observers say the art form has, like the rest of the culture, become more attuned to beauty, as currently defined. “It’s a much more visual culture,” the president of Opera America, Marc Scorca, said. “We are bombarded with images of people, whether it’s advertising, movies, television. The entire general public has become much more aware and sophisticated visually.”

Because of these changes, opera companies today place a higher premium on the kind of verisimilitude that audiences are used to in film and television. They understand that an audience won’t necessarily accept a middleaged, balding tenor in a romantic lead –– or an overweight diva in the role of a young heroine. The increased attention to weight among singers, Mr. Scorca said, “is a discussion, more profoundly of looking like the character you’re actually playing –– and a lot of opera heroes or heroines are young and sexy.

The result, he said, is “a rebalancing of opera from being an art form where the music was paramount, and the heck with the rest of it, to a situation where producers of opera are looking for something that is visually stimulating, dramatically true, and musically excellent. It’s a more integrated, balanced approach to the art form.”

Stars like Ms. Netrebko, or the sultry Mr. Flórez –– who, it should be said, both have sublime voices as well –– are great boons for opera companies in this more visual age. “I would imagine that every director would want someone like Anna to work with, because she can do everything, on every level,”Vincent Paterson, a choreographer who has worked closely with Madonna and Michael Jackson, and who directed Ms. Netrebko in a Los Angeles Opera production of Massenet’s “Manon” this fall, said. “If she wanted to leave the opera business and become a movie star, she could do it,” he said. “If she wanted to leave the business and become a fashion icon, she could do it.”

Mr. Gunn, who with his chiseled face and Greek-god physique could easily pass for a movie star, said he is usually willing to cooperate when directors want to use his looks for dramatic effect. “As long as it makes sense to me in the production, why for some reason we would have to be unclothed for any period of time, I’m okay with it,” he said. The first time he was asked to take off his clothes for art, he said, was in a 1999 production of Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride,”in which he played the Greek warrior Oreste. “I’m with my best friend, and we get shipwrecked, and there’s a storm, and our enemies grab us and they strip us, and we’re all wet, and we get chained to this log,”he explained. At the beginning of rehearsals, he said, the director, Francesca Zambello, warned him and his co-star: “Guys, you’re going to be half naked all the time, so you might as well go to the gym.”

Mr. Gunn seemed amused to be a heartthrob.”I’ve got five kids. I’ve been married for a long time. I think of myself more as ‘Dad,'” he said.

But not wanting people to think he’s cast for his looks has also driven him to work harder. “I’ve always felt that, if I’m going to do this –– if I’m going to be willing to get onstage and have them strip me down –– I have to be able to sing it a lot better than anyone else. Because you don’t want to be thought of in the classical world as being hired because you look the part.”

While the presence of handsome singers like Mr. Gunn can’t hurt efforts to expand the audience, industry insiders are divided about whether it can help. Does Ms. Netrebko’s appearing in Vogue really get more people to the opera? Mr. Driscoll, for one, was doubtful. “It’s great for cross-over marketing appeal, but I think the ultimate test of any singer is how well he or she does his or her job,” he said.

The associate artistic director at New York City Opera, Robin Thompson, on the other hand, said that “anything that contributes to a more effective performance is audience development.” Speaking of one of City Opera’s young stars, James Valenti, who sang Rodolfo in “La Bohème” this fall and will sing Pinkerton in “Madama Butterfly”next season, Mr. Thompson said, “When you have someone like James, you hit the jackpot.”

“An audience that comes to ‘Bohème’ for the first time doesn’t have any basis of comparison,” Mr. Thompson continued.”They have never seen a short, round, unattractive old Rodolfo. From their point of view, they all look like James, and that is helpful in getting people to come back.”

Mr. Driscoll, for his part, argued that for the purposes of audience development, a singer’s charisma is more important than beauty. “The male performer who did the most to expand the audience for opera in the last 50 years was Luciano Pavarotti,” he said. “People were excited by his work and adored him and still do.”

So who is the new Pavarotti? Mr. Driscoll said he was very impressed with the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón’s performance as quizmaster on one of the Met’s recent radio broadcasts. He was “dynamic, funny, spontaneous, natural, charismatic,” Mr. Driscoll said. “If you heard that voice and you heard him joking and talking, you would think ‘Gee, maybe this is someone who I would like to know more about.'”

“The Magic Flute,” December 30, 1:30 p.m., Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St. between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues; “I Puritani,” January 6, 1:30 p.m., Regal Union Square Stadium 14, 850 Broadway at 13th Street; “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” March 24, 1:30 p.m., Regal Union Square Stadium 14. Ticket information at metoperafamily.org.


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