Metropolitan Opera triumphs in unusual double-bill; Uzbek pianist thrills.

ySTANBUL (CyHAN)- On Feb. 21, the Metropolitan Opera staged a sold-out final performance of the double-bill of two one-act operas: Tchaikovsky's "Iolanta" and BEirtok's "Bluebeard's Castle."

"Iolanta" is Tchaikovsky's last opera, and it was premiered in St. Petersburg in 1892. It has remained relatively unknown outside of Russia, and was never before performed at the Met. But to a large extent, the appearance of Russian diva Anna Netrebko in the title role and the anticipation of seeing Valery Gergiev conduct it undoubtedly drove ticket sales.

Despite this soprano's star turn throughout the run of eight performances (the conductor for Feb. 21 was Pavel Smelkov), the most compelling artistry was the work of the director, Mariusz Trelinski, who staged both works.

The fascinating pairing of these two operas shared the theme of obsessive love -- one annihilating and the other triumphant over enormous adversity. The design team's overall conception played a striking, often overwhelming, role in conveying the protagonists' dilemmas and denouements.

A highly esteemed director of opera and film in his native Poland, Trelinski, along with Czech set designer Boris Kudlicka and Polish costume designer Marek Adamski, created exceptionally haunting mises en scene and matching costumes with almost exclusively gray and black tones and an occasional burst of white, blue or purple.

For "Iolanta," a blind princess trapped in her overprotective father's house, they fashioned a large rotating box as a set-within-a-set, which became a bedroom whose walls were covered with mounted heads of antlered deer, or a back porch surrounded by a forest.

In "Bluebeard's Castle," the set, using the Met's entire vast stage area, was the cavernous and forbidding interior of a house of horrors. Judith, the seventh wife of Bluebeard, discovers, by opening seven mysterious doors, the truth about his previous wives as well as her own fate. The ominously neutral, noir-ish setting with glass and gun-metal gray provided the dramatic opportunity for a color -- any color -- to jump out as psychologically significant in each woman's case.

As Judith, German soprano Nadja Michael's exemplary acting in the demanding role provided the necessary tension and despair as the helpless enabler of her brooding and threatening husband (the vividly sonorous baritone, Mikhail Petrenko). Both were singing in the original Hungarian. BEirtok's angular score takes some getting used to for its dissonance and absence of obvious melody, but its raw power is unmistakably blood-curdling to the last drop.

The wonderful Polish tenor Piotr Beczala sang opposite Netrebko as the young knight who first breaks the news to her about her condition, and they naturally fall in love. The cast and chorus, clad in white and brilliantly lit, sings a passionate hymn of thanks to God in the closing moments of this score. Tchaikovsky stole from himself frequently in his last opus, and though it didn't necessarily offer anything new (except for a delightful women's trio in the first scene), it was nevertheless irrepressibly lyrical and romantic, especially since nobody died at the end -- unlike most operas.

Alexei Tanovitski made an impressive Met debut as Iolanta's father King Rene, as did Elchin Azizov as her doctor, Ibn-Hakia, in this premiere, which was a co-production with Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera.

Uzbek wizard at the keyboard

Behzod Abduraimov, the young Uzbek pianist who has been making a big splash on the classical scene since his Carnegie Hall debut in January with the Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Gergiev, returned to the building on Feb. 18 to play a solo recital in Weill Hall, the intimate stage where audiences can practically breathe the same breath as the performers.

The musical experience was good news, bad news.

Abduraimov chose Chopin's four "Ballades" to start off, and while I appreciated his great panache and voluptuous finesse in expressing this oft-played repertoire, his disturbing physical histrionics only served to telegraph his intent rather than just letting a more organic connection rule his approach. As a result, things got a bit brittle and he had a rather rough time in the Ballade No. 4, where several obvious mistakes occurred.

He continued with a somewhat heavy-handed approach to two of Schubert's soulful and charming Impromptus. I suspect he was just getting warmed up for what came next, although the casualty in that exercise was Schubert: It's just not Abduraimov's cup of tea.

Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit" (Gaspard of the night) is. What happened next was some of the most powerful pianistic tone-painting I've ever heard. He dropped the needless posturing before each phrase and got down to business in a way that allowed him to physically inhabit the three scenes and their fantastic characters: "Ondine" (the water sprite), "Le gibet" (the gallows) and "Scarbo" (the ghoul).

Abduraimov jumped into the crystal streams to flirt with the capricious Ondine, enjoying her effervescent water-world with gusto and acrobatic playfulness. He slumped into a deathly funk as the evening bell tolled and the newly hanged man's body waved in the wind, Abduraimov cruising smoothly through the mordant horror. Then he suddenly sprang into spastic action with Scarbo, the mischievous prankster who creates chaos by darting around like a murderous bat.

This piece is Ravel's answer to the impossibly difficult "Islamey" by Balakirev, guaranteed to bring down the best of them with a fiendish, knuckle-busting score. Abduraimov totally triumphed here; this is where this pianist shows what he's meant to do, and he succeeded thrillingly. Now, I can't wait to hear him play "Islamey."

ALEXANDRA IVANOFF, NEW YORK (Cihan/Today's Zaman) CyHAN

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Publication:	Cihan News Agency (CNA)
Date:	Feb 27, 2015
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