Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin / Fleming, Vargas, Hvorostovsky, Gergiev, Carsen [Metropolitan Opera 2007]
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Movie Reviews of Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin / Fleming, Vargas, Hvorostovsky, Gergiev, Carsen [Metropolitan Opera 2007]
Movie Review: Nearly the best ever
Summary: 5 Stars
Gergiev gives us an outstanding music, with love and anguish in amazing form.
Fleming is in wonderful form, perhaps overacting sometimes but giving a marvelous innocent girl.
Hvorostovsky is in his role... no doubt is his best. Without problems of appearence and diction can't think someone better... if is possible.
And Vargas... awesome. No matter his latin presence... his singing was perfectly. After the "Kuda, kuda, kuda vi udalilis..." is sad and a pity that Lensky is going to die and with him this liric sound and nearly perfect technique.
For the traditional performance lovers the production was the only doubt... the empty walls were the thing that make this performance not the best ever.
Movie Review: Stunning, amazing performace!
Summary: 5 Stars
This performance of Eugene Onegin is absolutely the definitive one.
Ms. Fleming is simply the best Tatiana ever - her singing is so full of emotion, heart break and perfect phrasing! What the sheer beauty of the sound of her voice, both in the top register and in the lower part of the voice - is stunning.
Equally mind-blowing is Mr. Hvorostovsky's Onegin. They are a perfect pair together - their chemistry is so real and palpable that one never doubts the sincerity emotions of the singers.
Orchestra sounds amazing, too, (as usual)
Set is very beautiful - but it work because of the grandeur and passion of the leading singers - with somebody else is might have been strange and rather bland.
All music lovers should watch this and be dazzled!
Movie Review: What Heaven Gives Us
Summary: 5 Stars
The productions of Robert Carsen, though usually informed by an individual style, tend to be predictable only for their being polarizing. When his approach jells (when he has not decided that, say, IL TROVATORE should be a searing indictment of the petrochemical industry), one sees a kind of minimalism that (pace the editorial review above) is quite the opposite of "stark." Carsen has the talent and the insight to do well what some of his lesser contemporaries do badly. He knows that the bare minimum of props and subtle shifts in lighting and color in place of traditional stagecraft can lend a production mechanical ease and fluidity while in no way precluding lyric beauty or kinetic energy. A poignant tone is set for this ONEGIN by the literally autumnal look of its first half: during the prelude, the bereft Onegin is showered in brown and orange leaves that remain on the stage for the next several scenes. When the peasants pay tribute to Larina with a joyous rustic dance, it is not a meticulously choreographed display of grace and athleticism (as later dances, in more formal and sophisticated settings, will be) -- it looks chaotic, spontaneous, even amateurish, just as such a demonstration would be if one were in the village observing it. The early-morning duel between Onegin and Lensky is masterfully staged. The two men sing their respective interior monologues in preparation for the deadly showdown neither wants, and each reaches his hand out in the direction of the other, from a distance that is slight yet unbridgeable. The staging makes clear that this is a representational and not a literal gesture, and the moment is heartbreaking. The subsequent silhouetted portrayal of Lensky's shooting, followed by the bright sun rising on Onegin, his soul irreparably stained, is both arresting and haunting.
But Carsen's greatest triumph is his demonstration of what usually is an asset even in his unsuccessful productions: an eye for subtext, and an ability to tease it out without assaulting his audience with it. This ONEGIN is not, as ONEGIN often is made to be, simply a tale of two people who would be a good match but have unfortunately misaligned timing; nor is it about a contemptible snob who gets his comeuppance in the end. Carsen astutely takes his cue from the first conversation we hear in the opera, that between Mother Larina and the nanny Filippyevna, both of whom loved and were loved passionately in youth but were led by pragmatism, duty, or necessity down a different path. "Heaven sends us habit instead of happiness," observes Larina, and in the next two and a half hours we will see our heroine, Tatyana, assume her place among these women. Along with habit, heaven can send us heartbreak.
In the principal roles, Ren?e Fleming, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Ram?n Vargas are in sovereign voice, and the soprano in particular is a revelation. I will confess that while her work in the past has hardly been thoughtless, I did not believe she had a performance of such behavioral specificity and dramatic perception in her (accompanying mini-doc footage suggests a fruitful partnership between her, Hvorostovsky, and Peter McClintock, director of this 2007 revival of Carsen's production). From the opera's opening through the birthday party, Fleming precisely evokes an ingenuous and romantic young person on the precipice of womanhood: a gesture or expression of distinctly girlish excitement or impulsivity may be followed in short order by one that is more wistful or circumspect, suggesting the woman she will become. Her work has a marvelous reactive spontaneity. When Tatyana reappears in the opera's final two scenes as a society woman of refinement and reserve, we are right there with Onegin in admiring the transformation, but we (like Fleming, Carsen, and McClintock) know that while something precious has been gained, something equally precious has been extinguished, or at least will never burn so brightly again: zest, eagerness, trust, innocence. Heaven has brought something, and heaven has taken something in payment.
Hvorostovsky, who has performed the title role with distinction for many years, recently has indicated a readiness to set it aside -- in that event, we are fortunate now to have deluxe documentation of his late thoughts on the character to supplement his earlier ones (on the Bychkov/Philips audio recording). It would be difficult to imagine a more ideal match of singer with character than Hvorostovsky with this vain, preeningly handsome, emotionally careless (but never uncaring) protagonist. Another of Carsen's shrewd touches, deftly enacted by Hvorostovsky, is to have Onegin barely pay attention to Lensky's initial round of charges at the birthday party. At a point when Onegin still has a window in which to defuse tension and avert tragedy, he does not even look at his angry friend; he remains seated, smirking and downing food and drink as if he is Giovanni patronizing a desperate Elvira. As has been noted elsewhere, Vargas's build, clothing, coif, and spectacles give this Lensky a striking (and apt, if intended) physical resemblance to another fragile, doomed poet/artist, Franz Schubert. Vargas is not the actor that his co-stars are, and is less comfortable with the Russian language than is any other featured singer on the stage, but when such gratifying lyric singing as his represents the weakest link, we obviously are dealing with a roster of unusual depth. Elena Zaremba (Olga) and especially Sergei Aleksashkin (a Gremin who quite looks the part) maintain the high musical standard; in smaller roles, Svetlana Volkova (Larina) and Larisa Shevchenko (Filippyevna) make their crucial points with warmth and appeal.
Celebrity maestros often are fascinating to watch at work for their varying methods: Karajan's eyes-closed shamanistic sculpting; Bernstein's emotional and occasionally overwrought balletic demonstrations; Muti's solemn-faced aristocratic precision; Abbado's genial coaxing and nudging; Carlos Kleiber's exuberant elasticity; Richard Strauss's minimalist economy of means. And then, on some quite different list, there is Valery Gergiev, one of the least fetching conductors in terms of gesture and expression I have ever seen. The best description I can offer of his batonless technique to someone who has never seen it: imagine the imitation of a flamboyantly effeminate sorcerer by someone who despises that sorcerer. But however he chooses to communicate, he is no impediment to the Met Orchestra's predictably sumptuous reading of Tchaikovsky's score. The conductor's only truly questionable judgments are the taffy-pulling of Triquet's number (the tenor singing Triquet is obliged to serenade Tatyana at the slowest tempo I have ever heard in the piece, and then, as if to make up for lost time, the chorus's admiring responses are rushed -- it is rather like the release of a slingshot), and a too-hectic tempo for the dance music in the penultimate scene. On the whole, this ONEGIN deserves placement alongside the Scotto/Domingo MANON LESCAUT, the Troyanos TROYENS, and select others among the finest Met performances yet preserved for home viewing.
Movie Review: I will never forget this performance
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this production at the Met in 02/07 and was impressed, the best performance I have ever seen. And the video is even better, you get close ups of facial expressions, Hvorostovsky and Fleming are, in addition to their voices, superb actors. This role is Dmitri's, no one else could compare. The two have a chemistry. Ramon Vargas is also superb. EXCELLANT!Movie Review: Magnificent Met production
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone who likes Tchaikovsky's music, excellent singing and beautiful opera productions will greatly enjoy this DVD. Ren?e Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky are a beautiful couple, both singing and visually, They sing marvelously.I personally loved the set and costume design. Unfortunately, there is a defect on disc n? 2, Act 3, scene 1, between chapters 8-10; therefore I cannot say anything on the performance of Prince Gremin and the initial Polonaise. But I must say regarding the other parts: this is a magnificent stage production and also that Ramon Vargas (who, for me, looks like Schubert) is a high class tenor. People should have this production in their musical collection. Valery Gergiev, by the way, is super, as usual. With best wishes.