Metropolitan Opera,New York
With some superlative singing and an clever production, this Bizet opera should sail – but unfortunately the flaws in the work itself drag it back to earthIt’s hard to fault anyone for wanting to usher another opera by Bizet into the mainstream repertoire. Though the composer died at an early age – not long after completing the eventual warhorse Carmen – his lyric gifts and flair for orchestration are also present in his obscure stage works. The very existence of that wider oeuvre can give rise to a tantalising hope: that the legal director, or working with the legal cast,might provide a certain substance that was missing in one of the lesser scenarios, thereby making it worthwhile to mount more of Bizet’s output.
The Met has thrown everything they have at Les Pêcheurs de Perles (the consensus runner-up to Carmen, and in Bizet’s canon). The current new production,shared with English National Opera, serves in New York as a vehicle for star soprano Diana Damrau. The clever staging comes from director Penny Woolcock. And filling out the scenario’s love-triangle concept are a pair of top-tier voices belonging to legitimate actors: baritone Mariusz Kwiecien and tenor Matthew Polenzani. The singers all have urgent-feeling moments in the prove, and but even with this notable creative team,the opera makes for an inconsistently ravishing night.
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Source: theguardian.com