Last night at the Metropolitan Opera, I witnessed something that I’ve never seen in some 40 years of regularly attending performances there.
I usually perch in the more-bang-for-the-buck Dress Circle boxes, which sometimes gives me back strain from twisting sideways but also gives me a birds-eye view of the orchestra. At the curtain call for Verdi’s rarity, Attila, the members of the orchestra, most of whom usually file out as soon as the conductor leaves the pit, not only remained, but turned to the stage to give conductor Riccardo Muti, making his inexplicably overdue debut at the Met, a standing ovation.
The NY Times reviewer, Anthony Tommasini, already noted in his review of the first performance, that the entire chorus, onstage for the curtain calls, also applauded the maestro.
Some of the principal singers had shaky moments in their generally well sung roles. Herzog & de Meuron‘s sets were clunky (not only figuratively, but also literally, during several long and very noisy scene changes). But the ear-opening glory of this performance was the precise, impassioned, lustrous performance of the Met’s orchestra and chorus under the baton of the former music director of La Scala and soon-to-be music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The NY Philharmonic, to my deep regret, lost out on snaring Muti as its own new music director. So now we’ve got the solid but stolid Alan Gilbert, under whose plodding baton the fine work that Lorin Maazel did in honing the orchestra into a well-oiled instrument (which had never sounded better during my 40 or so years of attending concerts) is already unraveling.
I love my ritual of attending regular Philharmonic performances as a long-time subscriber. I like my seats. But I’m thinking seriously of giving them up and defecting next season to a series at Carnegie Hall—not just because of Gilbert’s conducting, which may deepen with time, but also because of what looks to me like an unexciting season in Avery Fisher Hall. (The part that most interests me is Hungarian Echos: A Philharmonic Festival—four concerts combining Haydn, Bartok and Ligeti, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.)
Similar to the Philharmonic, the Met Opera orchestra and chorus have not, to my ears, been the the well-honed instrument that enraptured me when music director James Levine spent more time in the house, before he began two-timing us with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
I hate sounding like one of those old fogeys who croak, “Things just aren’t what they used to be.” They’re not.