Metropolitan Opera – Verdi’s Nabucco. December 27, 2016.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat BB36, $25.)

Story.  See prior post.  One point I missed until now was Abigaille also converted to Judaism at the end of the opera.

Conductor – James Levine; Zaccaria – Dmitry Belosselskiy, Ismaele -Adam Diegel, Fenena – Nancy Fabiola Herrara, Abigaille – Tatianna Melnychencko, Anna – Danielle Talamantes, Nabucco – Zeljko Lucic.

The roles for Nabucco were sung both by Domingo and Lucic.  All the performances with Domingo were sold out, today’s attendance was very good also.  We did manage to get two rush tickets.  This was (at least) our fourth encounter with the opera, once in LA (around 2002), once in Rome, and at the Met in 2011.

The sets are the same.  We had a balcony seat in 2011, which offered a very different view of the stage.  The acoustics this evening, however, was simply superb.  Every principal’s singing come across clearly.

At the last Met performance I was remarking that Maria Guleghina as Abigaille had only one volume setting – loud.  Melnychenko, a Ukranian soprano in her Met debut, had a much broader emotional and volume range in comparison.  Perhaps Levine got the orchestra to quiet down during some of the softer solo passages, but they were quite exquisite.  Despite the title of the opera, Abigaille is the most complex and prominent character, so it was a nice to have a singer who was up to the task.  Given her girth (no polite way of saying it) Anne and I both worried if she would trip while going up and down the staircase, one time wearing a heavy cape.  Most of the time, however, I was just caught up in the story.

The other singers all did very well.  Talamantes as Anna, Zaccaria’s sister, made the most of the few lines she had.  I am quite sure Talamantes will take on a major role soon.  Lucic was strong most of the time, although there were a few passages he was inexplicably soft, perhaps the background he was against?

Mention must be made of the chorus, which had a lot of singing to do, starting with the opening number.  The Hebrew Slave Song (va, pensiero) was as good as it gets.  Chung Shu, who had seen an earlier performance (with Domingo), said this was repeated, this didn’t happen tonight.

Without the encore, and with only one intermission, the performance was less than three hours long, with a lot packed in.  Levine did the conducting from a wheelchair, although he seemed much more energetic, more controlled and more precise than what I remembered.  Given where we were seated, we couldn’t tell if there was a conductor in the prompter’s box.

The reviewer from New York Times was one of those that called for both Domingo’s and Levine’s retirement, yet he grudgingly agreed that “there was none of that [shame of old age] here for the triumphant Mr. Domingo and Mr. Levine.”  He still managed to put in a few digs about how Domingo is doing as a baritone.  Many of the other cast members were also different in the performance he saw.

We took the PATH and subway from Hoboken, and drove home after picking up the car from Hoboken.  It was quite late by the time we got home.  And this will be the last entry in this blog for 2016.