Revivals of warhorses like Puccini's Madama Butterfly can be a hit-or-miss experience. With little rehearsal and rotating casts they can often feel perfunctory; indeed, the Met is putting on a staggering 16 performances of Anthony Minghella's lacquered production this spring. Yet sometimes a change of cast provides exactly the jolt of excitement an oft-revived production needs: Asmik Grigorian, making her much-anticipated Met debut, provides exactly that.
Grigorian is the darling of the European opera scene, her enigmatic presence and fiercely intelligent acting a perfect fit for directors as diverse as Krzystof Warlikowski, Barrie Kosky and Romeo Castellucci. She also has a staggering musical range, adapting her slim but potent soprano to sing everything from Salome to Lady Macbeth to Sondheim's Mrs Lovett. With all of these tortured, complex women in her repertoire, the innocent Cio-Cio-San might seem an odd debut vehicle for her, but the straightforwardness and seriousness of her approach is a breath of fresh air.
Grigorian is a singer for which the term “stage animal” is often used, but there's little flailing about the stage. Instead it's the economy of her movement that impresses, balancing deliberateness and spontaneity and conveying all of the character’s complexity with nothing more than minuscule movements of her eyes. She doesn't try to make herself look or sound younger – there's gratefully little of the girlish yelping that sopranos often adopt in the opening act – and instead we get a woman of astonishing directness and simplicity. There are too many little details to list, but the way she pulls herself together after “Che tua madre” in front of her child is unforgettable – and acting opposite a puppet, no less! It’s one of those performances that makes every other Butterfly seem artificial.
But Madama Butterfly is an opera and not a stage play, and Grigorian’s voice doesn’t have the same impact as her acting. The Met’s auditorium is nearly double the size of the European theatres Grigorian has made her name in, and her soft-grained soprano sometimes struggled to project. She was at her best in her middle register which carried a luminous warmth and just the right amount of morbidezza, and she pulled off some stunning floated high notes in the love duet that suspended time. Her lower register, though, can sound hollow and she too often relied on glottal stops to reach the heavy, sustained high notes of the final scene. It was not bad singing by any means – taken purely on vocal terms Grigorian makes for an excellent Cio-Cio-San – but it wasn't the overwhelmingly visceral experience one has come to expect from her European performances. I wonder how she’ll fare as Salome here in future seasons.
Grigorian is nicely partnered by Jonathan Tetelman’s Pinkerton, who brought dramatic and musical complexity to what can be a stock villain. He made no effort to make the character sympathetic – his selfishness, cultural insensitivity, and libidinousness in the opening act were painful to watch – which made his genuine disgust and remorse in the final act all the more effective. He had ample opportunity to show off a ringing upper register, with an old-school bravado, but equally he demonstrated subtle musicality and wonderfully sculpted phrases. A vocal highlight was his final act trio with Lucas Meachem’s sympathetic Sharpless, whose warm baritone enveloped the auditorium, and Elizabeth DeShong’s peerless Suzuki, who brought a plummy mezzo of astonishing depth. Smaller parts were cast nicely, with Tony Stevenson’s slimy Goro and Jeongcheol Cha’s opulent Yamadori the highlights. Conductor Xian Zhang, so impressive in earlier performances of this run of Madama Butterfly, seemed to not have yet found her stride with the change in cast. Her lush, transparent reading of the score remained impressive, yet there were frequent coordination issues with the singers and it lacked the forward propulsion of her previous performances.
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