The Metropolitan Opera does galas very well. It covered itself in glory again on May 7 as it celebrated 50 years at Lincoln Center in the 3,786-seat theater it built to stage productions benefiting from modern technology in a majestic modern setting with some of the best acoustics of any opera house in the world.
The company’s first performance was Gounod’s Faust on Oct. 22, 1883 at the“Old Met” on West 39th Street. That building had much to love but was never suitable for the production values the Met’s management desired. As early as 1908, it was clear that a “New Met” was needed. After decades of false starts and dreams deferred, the great new theater opened at Lincoln Center on Sept. 16, 1966 with the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra starring Leontyne Price and Justino Diaz.
For Sunday’s gala, the Met secured the services of many of today’s best singers: Sopranos Diana Damrau, Renée Fleming, Angela Meade, Latonia Moore, Anna Netrebko, Kristine Opolais, Pretty Yende, and Sonya Yoncheva; mezzo-sopranos Stephanie Blythe, Joyce DiDonato, Elīna Garanča, Susan Graham, Isabel Leonard, and Dolora Zajick; countertenor David Daniels; tenors Piotr Beczala, Ben Bliss, Joseph Calleja, Javier Camarena, Plácido Domingo, Yusif Eyvazov, Michael Fabiano, Vittorio Grigolo, and Matthew Polenzani; baritones and basses Dwayne Croft, Günther Groissböck, Christopher Job, Mariusz Kwiecien, Željko Lučić, James Morris, Eric Owens, René Pape, Sava Vemic, Michael Volle, and Yenpang Wang. Three outstanding maestros — Marco Armiliato, James Levine and Yannick Nézet-Séguin — shared conducting duties.
Videos documenting the development, design and construction of the theater were projected on a scrim as the evening went on. A feature about Levine honored his wonderful contributions to the company. Most exciting of all was a filmed interview with 90-year-old Leontyne Price, who recalled the opening of the building and her role in it. For good measure, she made decades roll back when she suddenly sang and then charmingly admired the sound of her own voice.
The gala’s staging, by Julian Crouch with projections by 59 Productions, costumes by Kevin Pollard and lighting by Brian McDevitt, evoked many of the operas done at the Met. While this approach had some merits, to me it seemed a mistake to not include many of the existing elements of the building being celebrated, including the glorious gold silk curtain that audiences only encounter when older productions such as La Bohème and Aïda are presented. It might have been interesting to see the stage equipment, including the famous hydraulic lifts and rolling platforms, be put into use. Instead, we had blurry impressionistic designs and projections which were sometimes attractive but only approximated the glorious productions the new Metropolitan Opera House was created to mount.
There was a time when galas were more frequent and part of the company’s programming. Whether they were opening nights of each season, of new productions, or concerts intended to raise money for pension funds or the Metropolitan Opera Guild, these glittering evenings always connoted specialness. As such, they represented a departure from the Met’s extraordinary “norm” of presenting world-class opera with a magnificent orchestra and chorus, a corps de ballet, and many of the finest singers on the planet (including a notable amount of American artists who do their nation proud) in productions that ranged from splendid to famously controversial.
Perhaps the greatest gala in Met history was its centennial on Saturday Oct. 22, 1983. Divided into afternoon and evening concerts and broadcast live on television, it contained more than 70 singers, almost every great one in the world (the only ones missing, for me, were Hildegard Behrens, Carlo Bergonzi, Christa Ludwig, Leonie Rysanek, Renata Scotto, Teresa Stratas and Tatiana Troyanos). Conductors included Leonard Bernstein, Richard Bonynge, James Levine, John Pritchard, David Stivender and Jeffrey Tate. The Metropolitan Opera Ballet performed the Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila.
It struck me that Sunday’s gala had no dance. And only a Wagner chorus in a theater that staged two remarkable Ring cycles. No Czech opera. And nothing by Richard Strauss. Perhaps Deborah Voigt should have been invited to sing something in German. And new star Amber Wagner would have excelled with “Es gibt ein Reich” from Ariadne auf Naxos.
Yet Sunday’s gala was full of musical treasures. The standards were so high that it served as an eloquent rebuttal to those who say there are no good singers nowadays. It is my preference not to review musical performances for various reasons, but that will not prevent me from listing some of the music that moved me the most: Piotr Beczala singing “Quando le sere al placido” (Luisa Miller); René Pape in the mad scene from Boris Godunov; Susan Graham and Matthew Polenzani duetting in “Nuit d’Ivresse” (Les Troyens); Pretty Yende and Eric Owens as Porgy and Bess singing “Bess, you is my woman now”; Elīna Garanča singing Dalila’s “Mon couer s’ouvre à ta voix” (the Met should stage Massenet’s Cleopatre for her!); and Stephanie Blythe and David Daniels giving a hauntingly beautiful rendering of “Son nata a lagrimar” from Giulio Cesare.
Especially notable were Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano in a white-hot duet from Verdi’s I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata, which they are scheduled to star in in the future. Meade will star in Semiramide next season at the Met. At the gala, Joyce DiDonato, gave a stunning rendition of Semiramide’s magnificent “Bel raggio lusinghier” and made me wish that she and Meade could alternate in the title role next year.
Galas have a way of creating moments of magic. Opera is ultimately about intensity of feeling in response to beauty and emotion. The most thrilling moment of the night came when baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, famously battling cancer, made a surprise appearance to give a passionately gorgeous performance of Rigoletto’s “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata” that was sublime by any standard. This was a night full of magic and demonstrated what opera — and the Met — can achieve.