Levine a lot better

I'd been critical of James Levine's conducting in the Met's opening night Lucia. So it's only fair to say that in the new Macbeth production, he's much, much better. Right from the start, the orchestra was crisp, and dotted rhythms (very vague in Lucia) were strong and clear, with each note distinct. Sudden loud chords were really loud and sudden.

Some scenes were terrific, or even spectacularly terrific -- the apparitions, the Sleepwalking Scene, the Scottish exiles. Conducting like this -- sharp, pristine, focused, energetic, exciting, sensitive -- we don't hear every day. The Scottish Exiles chorus was especially wonderful, played and sung with strong emotion and the greatest clarity.

But a few things were strange, or at least they were on the night I was there. Levine was inconsistent. He led the Sleepwalking Scene very strongly. Elsewhere in the opera, Maria Guleghina, the Lady Macbeth, was a loose cannon, musically, vocally, dramatically. (Less kindly, she was like a Halloween caricature.) But here Levine kept her on a very short leash. He set the scene going at a brisk tempo, and cued each of Guleghina's entrances, so she didn't -- couldn't -- drag. At one point, with his left hand raised, he even led her phrasing, and she sang exactly what he conducted. So the Sleepwalking Scene was the one place in the opera where Gulgehina was truly good. (The stage director must have helped, at the very least by not indulging or provoking her in the inanities that cropped up elsewhere, like the moment in the first act when she threw her substantial self down on the floor and rolled. I thought she'd fall into the orchestra pit.)

And then, in the next scene, Macbeth, Željko Lucic, sang his big aria, and Levine didn't seem to conduct him at all. Lucic stretched phrases out of shape, and the aria dragged. I didn't get it. Why work hard to make one scene fabulous, and then (apparently) punt the next one? Guleghina's first-act aria sagged, too, for the same reasons. The Sleepwalking Scene might be the great highlight of the opera, but the opening aria is sharply hot. Why punt it?