Sweetening the Met’s Sour Note

Last season’s opening night at the Metropolitan Opera featuring “Madama Butterfly,” which inaugurated the Peter Gelbera, began quite literally, on a sour note. Despite the opera house’s spin machine humming in high gear, no amount of hype or red carpet could compensate for the disappointing Cio-Cio-San of Cristina Gallardo-Domas pointing out the fatal flaw of valuing directors over singers.But to its credit, the house has taken major steps to fix the problem, casting the reliable Patricia Racette in this year’s reprise, while replacing the fine tenor Marcello Giordani with the more charismatic Roberto Alagna. Ms. Racette was indeed a step up in terms of pitch control, but never warmed sufficiently to the role to move the audience significantly.Her sound was a bit harsh throughout and her sense of character was, well, simply absent. Ms. Racette was not a believable Cio-Cio-San, and it did not seem she was striving very hard to make her into a delicate flower. Rather her utterances were ordinary, pedestrian, as if she were singing but an initial rehearsal. There was considerable expectation that she would gloriously emerge from her cocoon for “Un bel di,” but instead delivered a somewhat pale version, whose lack of effectiveness can be measured by the respectful, but hardly enthusiastic, ovation from the audience. There was much color in the Han Feng costumes all about her, but Ms. Racette was as wan as the monochromes in which she was adorned. There was not a wet eye in the house.Some of her emotionlessness had to have been engendered by the lifeless conducting of Mark Elder, who led a tired and cliched effort from the pit. The great beauty of “Butterfly” mostly lies deep within the orchestra, a subtle but noticeable interplay of exotic colors and instrumental ornamentation. But Mr. Elder would have none of that, strolling with his players down a primrose path of unobjectionable and unobtrusive accompaniment. What a profligate use of such a fine ensemble!As for Mr. Alagna, he made for a problematic lead. Not in his best voice, he struggled and strained to hit his higher notes, doing so but with audible wreckage strewn along the way. Pinkerton is a difficult role to discuss in terms of emotional content, and a tenor can play him in various ways from villainous to victimized, but Mr. Alagna seemed to simply be presenting him without interpretation. In fact, for what purported to be a new and different look at an old chestnut, this performance was surprisingly stand and deliver, with little emphasis on thespianism. Like his mate, this Pinkerton had no passion, no vibrancy, not even any animal lust. After “Viene la sera” when he lifts his bride — with considerable difficulty, as it rather embarassingly turned out — to carry her off, there is speculative confusion as to how much fun they will have behind that screen.Maria Zifchak was fine as Suzuki and David Won was powerfully resonant as Yamadori, but the remainder of the cast, including the Sharpless of Luca Salsi, was, like this performance as a whole, competent but unremarkable.The Anthony Minghella production has been discussed to death, so let me just mention how it overwhelms the music at several key points. This is never a good thing and is characteristic of the absurdity of contracting directors with little or no operatic knowledge or experience and letting them cut their teeth on the stage of the greatest house in the world.Until October 27 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).

Sweetening the Met’s Sour Note

Sweetening the Met’s Sour Note

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