Last weekend I went to see the Met's Tannhauser. It was sort of a mixed bag, and my recommendation is to skip the first act and get there in time for the second.
The production is from 1978, and is. Well. From 1978. The opening in the cthonic Venusberg involves a repetitively-choreographed ballet orgy that outstays its welcome by a good fifteen minutes and then gives way to Michelle DeYoung's Venus, looking and sounding to a regrettable extent like a tired truck stop waitress, arguing with the immovable and inexpressive rock that is Johan Botha.
(I should note that Act I was the only place where the Met orchestra and Levine's conducting seemed off-point. Tannhauser's music seemed rushed and jumbled; the result sounded less like emotional turmoil than like James Levine had a train to catch.)
For the entire first act, I honestly wondered what I had gotten myself into and how I was going to live through four and a half hours of it. Botha is one of the last great practitioners of the park-and-bark school of opera performance; he has, as far as I could tell, never met a costar he wanted to look in the face at any point in time, and on more than one occasion he literally sat down on the stage and did not move again for ten or fifteen minutes.
"But it's totes because he's morbidly obese and -" No. Don't give me that. Stephanie Blythe can't be much smaller than Botha and you have only to watch her performance in the Lepage Die Walküre to see the physical and emotional command a talented performer can exert over a limited space. Botha just can't act for shit, and also seems to be a distinctly ungenerous stage partner, staring woodenly at the floor and giving his hapless co-singers nothing at all to react to. Poor Eva-Maria Westbroek's powerhouse Elizabeth bounced right off Botha like the idle wind he respects not; even Peter Mattei's glorious Wolfram only elicited a brief stir of interest.
But that's okay, right? I mean, it's opera, it's all about the voice, right? Well, no, but even if I agreed with that it wouldn't matter, because I don't like Botha's voice either.
I mean, look. Most of the praise for his performance - in fact, as far as I can tell, nearly all the praise for his performance - has centered around his amazing vocal stamina and precision. Tannhauser has some punishingly long and difficult passages, and I will concede one hundred percent that Botha outlasted them hands-down. He never seemed in danger of running short of wind or voice. I noted this during the performance and was duly impressed by it.
But... well, in opera as in sex, while stamina is a plus, one hopes that one's partner has more to bring to the table than the ability to hammer away like the Energizer Bunny for hours on end. Botha's voice sounds thin and colorless to me, sort of like a sheet of plywood. I can't hear any charm, individuality, beauty of tone, or elegance of phrasing in it, and it's not terribly expressive either. Believe me, I focused a lot on that voice, being as I was trapped in a barn for four and a half hours with it. I did not find that it repaid inspection.
So I guess it's lucky that Eva-Maria Westbroek and Peter Mattei were there to save the evening with their flawlessness. Westbroek apparently had some stability issues during the first couple of performances, and indeed the opening notes of Dich, teure Halle sounded a little uncertain, but she found her footing quickly and for the rest of the opera went from strength to strength. (I got the impression that she was headed up to Heaven, not to sit piously at the feet of the Lord and plead Tannhauser's case with chaste womanly tears, but to Clear Some Shit Up.) Her Elizabeth is not just an Injured Woman but a powerful voice of moral authority - an unusually strong and sympathetic rival for the hollow, tired mess going on in Venusberg, where you totally believe that that orgy has been going on since 1978 and seriously, just go the fuck home already because your mascara has run all over your face and it's just sad now.
Mattei shares space only with Simon Keenlyside in my desert island baritones collection. (Mariusz Kwiecien is maybe stowing away in the trunk.) I have loved him since his transcendent Amfortas in the 2013 Met Parsifal, and the role of Wolfram suits his voice as if they were made for each other - it sits precisely in the range where he seems to be most at ease, full of the elisions and soft turns that Mattei's voice loves. Against a powerhouse Tannhauser, Wolfram can occasionally fade into the background to an unfortunate extent. With an interpreter like Mattei, set on stage against an animatronic Tannhauser who only whirrs into motion when it's his turn to sing a verse of "Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a Pirate's Life for Me," Wolfram's lovely music and sheer human decency are the heart of the opera.
Oh, and I cannot do a review without mentioning Yin Fang as the Shepherd, because I love her and she should be in all Met productions going forward. Her Barbarina was the most delightful discovery of the season for me and she was just as wonderful here, with her gorgeous, warm voice that hits notes with the brightness and precision of a glockenspiel. She's sung so many things at Julliard that I'm kicking myself for missing; I'll have to keep closer tabs on her schedule.
So I strongly recommend seeing the production, with one caveat: have dinner or drinks or something, skip the first act, and get there at the first intermission for The Epic Tale of Wolfram, Elizabeth, and That Other Guy Who Sings Stuff Sometimes But Mostly We Just Wait For Wolfram and Elizabeth to Start Singing Again.
And then go home and read the Gawan cycle of Wolfram's Parzival, because it is half Monty Python and half Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and you will be dying from the hilarity.
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