Grand Opera: The Story of the Met (29 page)

Bing ushered in what would be an extraordinary Verdi era with
Don Carlo
. Verdi ruled again on the opening nights in 1951 and 1952 with
Aïda
and then
La Forza del destino
. All this was to be expected. Asked to name his favorite operas, the general manager–designate had ticked off three Verdi titles, and then just one work by each of seven other composers. Between 1950 and 1966, Verdi accounted for 25 percent of Metropolitan performances, significantly more than the 14 percent of Gatti’s years and the 19 percent of Johnson’s. Under Bing, Verdi pulled far ahead of Wagner, the previous front-runner. He also led the pack in the percentage of new productions, fourteen of fifty-nine. Bing’s predilection would have mattered little had the company not had, year after year, a cohort of phenomenal singers capable of doing honor to the master’s melos. Casts that included Milanov, Price, Del Monaco, Tucker, Bergonzi, Corelli, Merrill, and Siepi were arguably the best in the world.
³⁴

Margaret Webster found herself with far less pliable charges for the 1951
Aïda
(Nov. 13) than she had had for
Don Carlo
. Borrowing from her experience in the theater, she came up with the improbable notion of calling Milanov, Del Monaco, and the other principals together for a reading of the libretto. Neither the Aïda nor the Radamès would play along. Her leading lady in particular could not be persuaded into meaningful movement. “La donn’è immobile,” Webster joked. The press appreciated her handling of the Egyptian legions and Ethiopian slaves in Gérard’s streamlined Memphis and Thebes. But soon into the run, with new principals and the increasingly shoddy execution of her blueprint for the action, Webster asked that her name be removed from the program. It stayed.
³⁵

Two days after the
Aïda
opening, the Met put on
Rigoletto
as a frame for the exceptional gifts of Leonard Warren, Bing’s Verdi baritone of choice. Warren was cast in seven of the ten new Verdi productions mounted prior to
his death in 1960; he had been scheduled for an eighth. In the December 8 broadcast, he navigates this test role with a finesse that bespeaks the practice of the part at the Met since 1943 and the freshness of restudy for the new production that the
Times
called “one of the most interesting and exciting interpretations of this work that we have seen.” Tucker’s Duke of Mantua is no less seasoned with individual touches and is as stunning in its technical assurance and vocal radiance. The spinning tone of new soprano Hilde Güden comes as a relief after the too often chirpy Gildas, adequate to “Caro nome” but underpowered for the third act duet with the enraged father. Only Erede’s uninspired conducting mars the afternoon.
³⁶

Eugene Berman’s striking décor for
La Forza del destino
(Nov. 10, 1952) was so “special” that one critic “found it difficult to wrest [his] attention from the scenery and give it back to the characters.” Exceptionally well-matched singers wove the opera’s tangled web. The December 6 broadcast catches Milanov in what was her last peak year, solid and centered, soaring at the top, floating her trademark pianissimos. Tucker and Warren fill the arching phrases of their duets. Fritz Stiedry plays the overture after the first scene (as had Bruno Walter before him) so as to accommodate latecomers. Stiedry performed further surgery on the score, boasting that his version “as it now stands is absolutely first class.” The conductor excised the inn scene, holding that it “only confuses the audience,” when in fact it provides narrative matter essential to the understanding of a complex plot, and he deleted many other pages from one of Verdi’s most original compositions. Stiedry might be forgiven these desecrations had he generated a fraction of the frisson of Walter’s 1943
Forza
broadcast.
³⁷

The two new Verdi productions of 1956–57 were bouquets for Milanov and Tebaldi in the extraordinary season that opened with the debut of Maria Callas. Milanov should not have taken on
Ernani
(Nov. 23) so late in her career. The December 29broadcast documents her receding range and flexibility. Del Monaco’s tenor rings out all too brazenly. The performance is crowned by Warren’s legato in his long act 3 scene. Alas, in
Ernani
as in
La Forza del destino,
the composer’s intentions were violated. Reviewers praised the energy of Mitropoulos’s leadership but failed to mention the numerous cuts that altered the score’s proportions, the interpolated act 4 ballet, and the particularly wrongheaded idea of detaching “Infelice” (beautifully sung by Siepi) from its cabaletta and moving it to act 2. The well-received
La Traviata
opened on February 21. In the April 6 broadcast, Fausto Cleva indulges the slow tempos favored by Warren (“magnificent,” “stole the show”)
and Tebaldi (“sends sparks across the footlights,” “reached the highest dramatic peaks”). Tebaldi lowers the act 1 aria and cabaletta to the advantage of the florid passages; the highest notes remain hard. The consumptive Violetta, a difficult negotiation for a huge voice with a short top, would be dropped from her repertoire. Still, the soprano sings much of the role with command, and her most dulcet piano lingers in memory. Oliver Smith’s enormous staircases in acts 1 and 3 constricted the flow of the action; the tiny terrace of a tiny summerhouse plunked downstage in act 2 was even more confining.
³⁸

Macbeth,
again a vehicle for Warren, was one of two Verdi premieres Bing presented at the old Met. In November 1958, the general manager had fired Maria Callas, the Lady Macbeth-to-be, when she demanded that he adjust her schedule to accommodate the arduous role. We retell the oft-told episode later in this chapter. And when in January 1959, Mitropoulos suffered a heart attack, Shakespeare’s unlucky “Scottish play” lived up to its reputation once more. Leonie Rysanek, in her debut, took over for Callas, Erich Leinsdorf for Mitropoulos. As the Viennese soprano made her entrance, there came the shout of “Brava Callas.” Bing later confessed that it was he who had arranged for the offensive outcry; he had wanted to win sympathy for his substitute. Despite uncertain lower and middle registers, and a frequently ill-tuned though often resplendent top as heard in the February 21 broadcast, the charismatic Rysanek notched a great success. Warren and Bergonzi (in the essentially one-aria role of Macduff) acknowledge the belcantist traces of Verdi’s 1847 score. This was the third
Macbeth
with which Bing was intimately involved, all three directed by Carl Ebert and designed by Caspar Neher: the first was produced in Berlin in 1931 while he was Ebert’s assistant; the second at Glyndebourne in 1938. The Met’s
Macbeth,
hung with the trappings of horror, skulls and the like, was modeled on its two predecessors. But by 1959, the expressionistic concept had had its day.
³⁹

Warren was the irreplaceable baritone in the new productions of
Il Trovatore
(Oct. 26, 1959) and
Simon Boccanegra
(March 1, 1960). The
Trovatore
cast included Antonietta Stella and Carlo Bergonzi, but it was Giulietta Simionato, in her debut as Azucena, who brought down the house.
Simon Boccanegra
returned that same season after more than a decade. The reviewers admired the neglected masterpiece, Frederick Fox’s décor, and Webster for sorting out the convoluted plot. Tebaldi was unavailable for the premiere, utility soprano Mary Curtis-Verna made for a mediocre Amelia, and Warren, as it turned out, sang his last complete performance.
Three days later, during act 2 of
La Forza del destino,
he collapsed at the start of the cabaletta to “Urna fatale [Fatal urn],” a poignant epitaph for this consummate Verdian. Earlier that evening, relevant or not, Warren had been told to brace himself for catcalls from a pro-Italian cabal. Frank Guarrera, Warren’s cover, soldiered on for most of the remaining
Boccanegra
performances.
⁴⁰

After Warren’s death,
Nabucco
went to Cornell MacNeil. In the December 3 broadcast, he thunders majestically as the King of Babylon in defiance of God and unfolds a pure legato as the contrite, fallen ruler. Rysanek, on the other hand, fails in what is surely one of the most difficult roles for soprano. Abigaille’s fearsome intervals and coloratura passages demand a technique she simply lacked. Sharing vocal honors with MacNeil are Siepi as Zaccaria and Rosalind Elias as Fenena. Winthrop Sargeant disliked the sets (“fussily arty and completely devoid of atmosphere”) and accused Gunther Rennert of resorting to “a repetition of all the formulas for desultory spear-carrying that have beset productions of spectacular opera from time immemorial.” Time has vindicated Bing:
Nabucco
vanished at the end of the 1960–61 season only to make a triumphant return in 2001.
⁴¹

Next came reinvestitures of
Un Ballo in maschera
(Jan. 25, 1962),
Otello
(March 10, 1963), and
Aïda
(Oct. 14, 1963). Bergonzi, as
Ballo
’s mercurial King of Sweden, juggled playfulness, passion, and benevolent authority with his characteristic finesse; Rysanek was again hollow in Amelia’s middle and low registers; Merrill blustered his way through Renato’s despair. Sargeant found the intricate sets “rather self-conscious and arty.”
Otello
had a better reception. Eugene Berman drew his ornate décors after Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini. Herbert Graf, who had staged a new
Otello
in 1937 and had given James McCracken starring opportunities in Zurich, directed the tenor in his widely acclaimed return to the Met. Gabriella Tucci filled in as Desdemona when Tebaldi left to repair a vocal breakdown. Not since Szell and Busch in the 1940s had the Met seen an
Otello
conductor of Georg Solti’s caliber. A few months later, on opening night 1963, Solti presided over
Aïda,
rescuing the score and the orchestra from the routine in which it was mired. Birgit Nilsson’s Ethiopian slave dominated the ensemble in the Triumphal Scene. Nathaniel Merrill and Robert O’Hearn, who had demonstrated their talent for mounting big shows with their 1962–63
Meistersinger,
served up a colossal Egypt. Harold Schonberg thought that “like so many recent Metropolitan productions, it falls between two schools. It is neither conservative nor modern”
(Times)
.
⁴²

 

FIGURE 28.
Falstaff
, act 1, scene 2, right to left, Luigi Alva as Fenton, Judith Raskin as Nannetta, Regina Resnik as Dame Quickly, Rosalind Elias as Meg Page, Gabriella Tucci as Alice Ford, Paul Franke as Dr. Cajus, Mario Sereni as Ford, Andrea Velis as Bardolfo, Norman Scott as Pistola, 1964 (Louis Mélançon; courtesy Metropolitan Opera Archives)

 

Falstaff
(March 21, 1964) was the last new production of Verdi staged at the old Met. And as it must be for this comic final bow of the seventy-nine-year-old composer, it was the ensemble that counted. The principals, among them Anselmo Colzani (Falstaff), Tucci (Alice), Judith Raskin (Nanetta), and Regina Resnik (an incomparable Dame Quickly), played as a community of artists delighted to inhabit the Elizabethan world created for them by director-designer Franco Zeffirelli: the murky Garter Inn, Ford’s sunlit garden, the solid half-timbered interior of his house, the moonlit Windsor forest. The integration of music and drama rested with Leonard Bernstein, making his Met debut along with Zeffirelli. With the opening chords, the orchestra’s responsiveness fairly leapt at the audience, and so it continued to the great fugue that closes this conductor’s opera.
Falstaff
finally escaped from the gilded cage of the succès d’estime to register high among the season’s box-office leaders, a fitting capstone to Bing’s ongoing celebration of Verdi. For Alan Rich, the production was “a milestone in the history of operatic production in this city, an artistic forward step in the conception of opera, and a challenge that will be met only with the utmost difficulty”
(Herald Tribune)
.