{"id":1622,"date":"2019-12-24T02:35:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T07:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1622"},"modified":"2019-12-24T02:35:27","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T07:35:27","slug":"pique-dame-at-the-met-and-at-the-bolshoi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2019\/12\/pique-dame-at-the-met-and-at-the-bolshoi.html","title":{"rendered":"“Pique Dame” at the Met — and at the Bolshoi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Bolshoi Theatre<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The formidable Norwegian soprano Lisa Davidsen, making her Metropolitan Opera debut in Tchaikovsky\u2019s Queen<\/em> of Spades<\/em>, is right now New York\u2019s most talked about opera singer. I caught the final performance in the run, on December 21 \u2013 and discovered myself mainly thinking about the Bolshoi Opera\u2019s historic four-week New York season of 1975.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bolshoi was a throwback\nto the days of ensemble opera \u2013 before airplanes. As of 1975 everything was still\nsung in Russian. Everyone more or less stayed put in Moscow, sharing and\nperpetuating inherited knowledge and tradition. I am referring not only to the\nsingers, but to the conductors, the chorus, and \u2013 most especially \u2013 to the orchestra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to that visit, I had\nassumed that the pit acoustic of the Metropolitan Opera House was merely adequate.\nThe Met orchestra projected clearly. The sound was reasonably transparent. Balances\nwere often OK. But, even with Herbert von Karajan conducting Wagner, the too-big\nhouse seemed incapable of conveying orchestral timbres as ravishing as, say,\nthe sound of the Vienna Philharmonic in its Staatsoper. And there was never\nenough bass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Astonishingly, the Bolshoi\norchestra projected a sonic kaleidoscope. There was plenty of bass. The winds\nand brass quivered with color (in 1975 Russian orchestras still favored lots of\nvibrato). The string choirs delivered coiled tonal wisps and torrential chordal\nsheets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, Valery Gergiev\u2019s\nMariinski Theater Orchestra, visiting the Met, was \u2013 again \u2013 a bigger, more\ndistinctive presence than the house band. It didn\u2019t sound at all like the Bolshoi\nOrchestra \u2013 its sonic signature was fuller, darker, less colorful, never\ndelicate. These were orchestras with personalities. And they participated in\nthe action as partners, not accompanists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pique Da<\/em>me is an opera in which the orchestra is a full protagonist. It begins, in the pit, with signature Tchaikovsky: music of throbbing intensity, music that sounds hackneyed unless delivered with multi-hued intensity. \u00a0Hearing the Met players launch Pique Dame<\/em>, conducted by Vasily Petrenko, was dispiriting. The orchestra warmed up after that, and Petrenko made a distinctly positive impression. But not once over the course of three acts did I hear anything like a true duet between singers and instrumentalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I got home I discovered that, miraculously, \u00a0the Bolshoi Pique <\/em><\/a>Dame<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 the one that came to New York \u2013 may be viewed in its entirety on youtube, filmed in live performance in Moscow in 1983. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to hear what I am ranting about, go to 2:16:30: Tamara Milashkina singing Lisa\u2019s act three aria, with Yuri Simonov (who made a strong impression in New York) conducting. The orchestra\u2019s nuanced response to her initial introspection is empathetic. As her song gathers force, the sighing strings not only breathe, but feel with the singer. The final faint pizzicato is exquisitely calibrated. This kind of partnering is not produced by a mediating baton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Met once had such an orchestra, beginning in the 1880s — under Anton Seidl, Gustav Mahler, and Arturo Toscanini. I know, there are no recordings. (Lionel Mapleson\u2019s turn-of-the-century cylinders capture other conductors.) But Seidl \u2013 the leading Wagner conductor of his generation \u2013 testified that New York had more first-rate orchestral musicians than any European city. And Mahler and Toscanini, chronic complainers both, never complained about the caliber of the Met orchestra (as Mahler complained about the New York Philharmonic). When we can at last audition the Met orchestra on surviving radio broadcasts, it\u2019s still fundamentally an Italian band \u2013 the Toscanini imprint is indelible. This pit ensemble, gloriously maintained by Ettore Panizza (commanding the house’s Italian wing) and Artur Bodanzky (the German), was an absolute powderkeg — nothing like it any longer exists. (Panizza called the Met orchestra the equal of the Vienna Philharmonic \u2013 a claim that could not be made today.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here<\/a><\/strong> is the greatest Otello<\/em> in recorded sound \u2013 conducted by Panizza on February 12, 1938, with Giovanni Martinelli, Lawrence Tibbett, and Elisabeth Rethberg. You can sample “Dio mi potevi” here.<\/a><\/strong> To observe that the orchestra \u201cknows the opera\u201d isn\u2019t about the notes. Verdi is culturally kindred to these players: it\u2019s in their blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here<\/a><\/strong> is the greatest Siegfried<\/em> in recorded sound \u2013 conducted by Bodanzky on January 30, 1937. Don\u2019t expect the Vienna Philharmonic. This is eruptive, Italianate Wagner that sings. In Brunnhilde\u2019s Awakening, the strings\u2019 phased, surging ascent to \u201cHeil dir, Sonne!\u201d, capped by a hair-trigger detonation, is unique in my experience. (Start at 2:57:00 and strap yourself in.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once had occasion to share\nthis excerpt with my friend Alexander Toradze. Lexo is a distinguished product\nof the Moscow Conservatory. He regularly attended the Bolshoi in the 1970s. Hearing\nfor the first time Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior in their legendary Met\ncollaboration, he exclaimed: \u201cWhat an orchestra!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on Bodanzky at the Met, click here.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on Bodanzky and Panizza at the Met,\nsee my \u201cClassical Music in America: A History of its Rise and Fall\u201d (2005). <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The formidable Norwegian soprano Lisa Davidsen, making her Metropolitan Opera debut in Tchaikovsky\u2019s Queen of Spades, is right now New York\u2019s most talked about opera singer. I caught the final performance in the run, on December 21 \u2013 and discovered myself mainly thinking about the Bolshoi Opera\u2019s historic four-week New York season of 1975. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-qa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1622"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1633,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}