James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala

James Levine made his début at the Metropolitan Opera at the age of twenty-seven. On 5 June 1971, he conducted a matinée performance of Tosca with Grace Bumbry in the title role, Franco Corelli as Cavaradossi and Peter Glossop - also making his Met début - as Scarpia. Levine was the longest serving conductor in the Met's history, becoming its Principal Conductor in 1973, its Music Director in 1976 and its inaugural Artistic Director in 1986. At the time of his gala, he had led the Met in 1,646 performances of sixty-eight operas, twenty-one of which he had introduced into the company's repertoire. He had also notably initiated the Met's series of television broadcasts with a production of La Bohème starring Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto in 1977.[1][2]

The Met celebrated the silver anniversary of Levine's arrival there with a concert on 27 April 1996. Fifty-eight soloists contributed to a gala that lasted from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. on the following morning. They performed on three sets: an Ezio Frigerio design for Act 1 of Francesca da Rimini, a gift of Mrs Donald D. Harrington; a Günther Schneider-Siemssen design for Act 2 of Arabella, a gift in part of Mrs Michael Falk; and a Schneider-Siemssen design for Act 2 of Tannhäuser, a gift of the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation and of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. The gala as a whole was sponsored by Mrs Emily Fisher Landau. Its television broadcast was sponsored by Mrs Harrington, the Texaco Philanthropic Foundation, Inc., and the National Endowment For the Arts, in association with Deutsche Grammophon, the United Kingdom's BBC Worldwide Television, Japan's NHK, Holland's Nederlandse Programma Stichting, Denmark's Danmarks Radio, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Sweden's Sveriges Television.[2]

Georges Bizet

Les pêcheurs de perles

• 1 (6:12) "Au fond du temple saint", with Roberto Alagna (Nadir) and Bryn Terfel (Zurga)

Gustave Charpentier

Louise

• 2 (5:56) "Depuis le jour", with Renée Fleming (Louise)

Charles Gounod

Faust

• 3 (10:01) "Mais ce Dieu, que peut-il pour moi?", with Plácido Domingo (Faust) and Samuel Ramey (Méphistophélès)

Franz Lehár

Giuditta

• 4 (4:58) "Ich weiß es selber nicht... Mein Lippen, sie küssen so heiß", with Ileana Cotrubas (Giuditta)

Giuseppe Verdi

Don Carlo

• 5 (5:00) "Ah, più non vedrò... O don fatale", with Dolora Zajick (Eboli)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni

• 6 (8:28) "Di molte faci il lume... Sola, sola, in buio loco", with Renée Fleming (Donna Anna), Kiri Te Kanawa (Donna Elvira), Hei-Kyung Hong (Zerlina), Jerry Hadley (Don Ottavio), Bryn Terfel (Leporello) and Julien Robbins (Masetto)

Charles Gounod

Roméo et Juliette

• 7 (4:11) "Je veux vivre dans ce rêve", with Ruth Ann Swenson (Juliette)

Johann Strauss II

Die Fledermaus

• 8 (4:41) "Dieser Anstand, so manierlich", with Karita Mattila (Rosalinde) and Håkan Hagegård (Eisenstein)

Jules Massenet (1842-1912)

Werther (Geneva, 1892), with a libretto by Édouard Blau (1836-1906), Paul Milliet (1848-1924) and Georges Hartmann (1843-1900, writing as Henri Grémont) after Die Leiden des jungen Werthers ("The sorrows of young Werther", 1774) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• 9 (2:49) "Pourquoi me réveiller", with Alfredo Kraus (Werther)

Camille Saint-Saëns

Samson et Dalila

• 10 (5:57) "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix", with Grace Bumbry (Dalila)

Richard Wagner

Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg

• 11 (3:22) "Dich, teure Halle", with Deborah Voigt (Elisabeth)

Jacques Offenbach

La Périchole

• 12 (2:11) "Ah! Quel dîner je viens de faire", with Frederica von Stade (La Périchole)

Richard Strauss

Der Rosenkavalier

• 13 (6:01) "Hab mir's gelobt", with Renée Fleming (Feldmarschallin), Anne Sofie von Otter (Octavian) and Heidi Grant Murphy (Sophie von Faninal)

A tribute

• 14 (2:42) Concluding encomium by Birgit Nilsson[1]

Mike Silverman reviewed the gala for the Associated Press on 28 April 1996. It was not until the early hours, he wrote, that the Met's audience heard Birgit Nilsson paying tribute to James Levine with a few bars of "Ho-jo-to-ho" from her signature role, Brünnhilde. Despite the absence of some singers, like Ben Heppner, due to scheduling clashes, and of others, like Cecilia Bartoli and Luciano Pavarotti, due to health issues, the concert was a "thrilling, if exhausting spectacle" replete with vocal talent. The gala's cast list ranged from veterans like the 71-year-old Carlo Bergonzi to newcomers like the 32-year-old Roberto Alagna.[4]

Alagna was more impressive than he had been in a recent La Bohème. His contributions to the Pearlfishers' Duet and the Cherry Duet from L'amico Fritz were both lovely. Two other young tenors - Jerry Hadley and Richard Leech - both sang well too, but no other representatives of their peer group put in an appearance: instead the Met heard the elderly Bergonzi and Alfredo Kraus and the 55-year-old Plácido Domingo, as suave as usual in a trio from Ernani and a duet from Faust.[4]

Bryn Terfel displayed his "ebullient" Leporello in addition to duetting with Alagna in Bizet, his "booming, mellifluous baritone and utter ease and gracefulness as a performer [marking] him as one in a million". He was "sure to be one of the superstars of the next generation".[4]

The best of the evening's female singers was Renée Fleming, "whose soprano voice is as beautiful as any in memory". She was luminous in Louise and Der Rosenkavalier, abetted in the latter by gorgeous singing from Heidi Grant Murphy and Anne Sofie von Otter. Her inclusion in a sextet from Don Giovanni made her the only soloist to be heard more than twice.[4]

Wagner enthusiasts would undoubtedly be encouraged by the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung delivered by Jane Eaglen, a British dramatic soprano whose recent success in Wagner in Chicago had evidently not been a flash in the pan. She was worthy to share a billing with Birgit Nilsson. On the last occasion on which Nilsson had appeared at the Met, in its 1983 Centennial Gala, she had sung Isolde's Narrative and Curse. In the Levine gala, that was the passage offered by Waltraud Meier. Her performance was "thrilling", but she was a mezzo-soprano venturing into soprano territory, and the stress evident in her highest notes made one anxious as to whether she was pursuing a path that was right for her.[4]

Dawn Upshaw was "typically simple, silvery and winning" in Mozart's "Deh! Vieni, non tardar". "The contrast could not have been more striking with the number that preceded it - a mannered, diva-ish rendition by Jessye Norman, with high notes that consistently went flat, of an aria from Berlioz's Damnation of Faust".[4]

Levine did not avail himself of the opportunity to make any speeches, but merely "conducted the Met's wonderful orchestra with love and enthusiasm".[4]

Tim Page reviewed the gala in The Washington Post on 29 April 1996. It was, he wrote, a "glorious, crazy, songful party". Not all the most distinguished opera singers were present: José Carreras had a previous commitment, Montserrat Caballé, Marilyn Horne and Teresa Stratas were ill and Kathleen Battle had been fired from the Met in 1994. But the concert still presented an astonishing constellation of some of opera's brightest stars.[5]

Dominated by Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, the gala's programme was typical of the repertoire of the Levine era but lacked any unifying theme otherwise. It was "a sort of melodious circus - a celestial vaudeville". There were consequently many awkward transitions. For example, Jane Eaglen's noble rendition of the immolation scene from Götterdämmerung was followed by the broad comedy of Frederica von Stade in the tipsy aria from La Périchole; the effect was to "dissipate the solemn afterglow of the one and make the other seem goofy and tasteless".[5]

Von Stade also supplied "one of the evening's true glories" in a performance of Cherubino's "Voi che sapete" [omitted from DG's DVD and CD]. "Opera has recently offered little more wonderful than von Stade's interpretation of that famous ardent, hormone-crazed pubescent boy". Also outstanding were Carlo Bergonzi and Alfredo Kraus, skillfully making the most of resources depleted by old age; Ileana Cotrubas, "ripely and irresistibly nostalgic" in Giuditta; Plácido Domingo, combining "magnificent vocalizing and the most acute artistic intelligence" in Don Carlo and Faust; Renée Fleming, "luscious and immaculate" in Louise, Don Giovanni and Der Rosenkavalier; Waltraud Meier, singing Isolde's curse with "thrilling ferocity"; and Ruth Ann Swenson, compensating for her technical deficiencies in a coloratura showpiece from Roméo et Juliette with character and intelligence.[5]

There were disappointments too. Håkan Hagegård and Karita Mattila were guilty of "campy snickering" in Die Fledermaus. Jerry Hadley perpetrated "vulgar Mario Lanza-isms" in The land of smiles [also omitted by DG]. Ghena Dimitrova, Franco Farina and Juan Pons were "third-rate" in Un ballo in maschera. And Sharon Sweet's mere appearance at the gala was "difficult to explain".[5]

Of especial interest were two prominent up and coming artists, Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu [appearing one day after their wedding[2]]. Alagna had "a light, sweet and supple voice of moderate size (some high notes that were both delicate and ringing) and a not inconsiderable dramatic ability", but it was far to soon to bracket him with Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti. Gheorghiu was much more impressive, with "a voice of unusual and haunting timbre, a distinctive creative personality [and] attention to the sheer phonic sound of the words she sings".[5]

None of the soloists, though, could outshine the orchestra and their conductor. Thanks to Levine, the Met's pit was home to "one of the most responsive and virtuosic ensembles in the world", and it was remarkable that he could "preside so effortlessly and so idiomatically over such a range of musical styles, over so many hours".[5]

Martin Bernheimer reviewed the gala in The Los Angeles Times on 29 April 1996. It was, he wrote, a "mega-monster concert", a "shameless, shapeless, formless smorgasbord of arias and ensembles", "a parade of disparate singers striking poses in competitive evening attire" in which "the assembled women blew a crescendo of kisses to their beaming boss out front".[6]

The gala began with a somewhat lethargic treatment of the overture to Rienzi. Newlyweds Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu were clear, refined and sugary in the Cherry Duet from L'amico Fritz. Dolora Zajick sang with "full-throated bravura" in Eboli's "O don fatale". Waltraud Meier was incandescent in Isolde's Narrative and Curse. Carlo Bergonzi was touching and elegant in Luisa Miller. Alfredo Kraus amazed with his suavity and staying power as Werther and Hoffmann. Raymond Gniewek played an exquisite violin solo in I Lombardi. Catherine Malfitano and Dwayne Croft provided one of the evening's most successful passages of authentic music drama in a pyrexic scene from Eugene Onegin.[6]

Jane Eaglen, "a Wagnerian diva straight from a New Yorker cartoon", showed that it did not much matter what Brünnhilde looked like if she had a voice as overwhelming as a tsunami. Sharon Sweet was "strident" in La forza del destino. Frederica von Stade demonstrated that "charm conquers all" with "her still boyish Cherubino and irresistibly tipsy Périchole". Karita Mattila and Hakån Hagegård were almost as seductive in a flirtatious Watch Duet from Die Fledermaus. Birgit Nilsson provided the gala's most exhilarating tribute to Levine with a trumpet-like Valkyrie war-cry.[6]

Plácido Domingo and Samuel Ramey were comfortingly stellar in "Faust", Ramey for once being allowed to perform without baring his chest. Deborah Voigt, Bryn Terfel, Ruth Ann Swenson, Aprile Millo and Gabriela Beňačková were equally impressive in their celestial wattage.[6]

As far as clothing was concerned, the contributors most deserving of an award were Ileana Cotrubas for sporting a "gigantic Christmas bow", Mark Oswald for losing his tie and vest in Don Pasquale and "the various cleavage divas who lent new meaning to the concept of heaving bosoms".[6]

Jessye Norman perpetrated the evening's "most mannered" selection in a "crooned, roared and sighed" performance of "D'amour l'ardente flamme" that was so erratic in pitch as to present Berlioz as bitonal. Grace Bumbry was a wobbly old Dalila, and Gwyneth Jones an even wobblier Turandot. Dawn Upshaw's eloquent ornamentation in a "silver-bell" "Deh! Vieni, non tardar" was jarringly followed by the Jerry Hadley slathering on the schmalz in "Dein ist mein ganzes Herz". Maria Ewing "yowled" Gershwin's "My man's gone now" with her hands rather oddly thrust into her pockets. Kiri Te Kanawa's honeyed performance of an aria from Don Giovanni was accompanied by "comic-vamp routines". Ghena Dimitrova, Franco Farina and Juan Pons sang a trio from Un ballo in maschera as though working in some theatre in the provinces.[6]

Renée Fleming provided the most beautiful vocalism of the entire concert in her excerpts from Louise and Der Rosenkavalier. James Morris, on the other hand, raised concerns for the health of his voice by the way in which he delivered Wotan's Farewell in his "fraying basso". James Levine's guidance of his excellent orchestra was "sympathetic if sometimes loud and sometimes inflexible".[6]

Neil Crory reviewed the gala on Laserdisc in the Fall 1997 issue of Opera Canada. It was, he wrote, "the gala-to-end-all-galas". Its programme booklet's cancellation list alone deserved a mention in The Guinness Book of Records, with Cecilia Bartoli, Hildegard Behrens, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Marilyn Horne and Luciano Pavarotti all pleading illness.[7]

The gala had not been consistent in quality. There were "a few blazing performances", but also "many that merely smouldered and others that simply failed to ignite". Happily, some of the evening's better selections had been preserved on DG's video discs.[7]

Deborah Voigt was "radiant" in "Dich teure Halle". Renée Fleming was "stunning" in both Der Rosenkavalier and an "expressive, detailed" excerpt from Louise. Ruth Ann Swenson was "appropriately sun-filled" in the Waltz Song from Roméo et Juliette. Frederica von Stade - a perennial Met darling - was "hysterically funny" in the tipsy aria from La Périchole. And in a "forthright" "O don fatale", Dolora Zajick brought the house down.[7]

J. B. Steane reviewed the CD of the gala in Gramophone in December 1998. "Out come the stars," he wrote, "one by one or two by two and then six of them in a galaxy. Some have been in the firmament a long time, others are almost new. But all are there ... to pay tribute".[8]

There was no doubt that the gala must have been a delightful celebration, but the wisest rule for such events was to record them in one's memory rather than on tape. This was not to say that the CD was without merit. Renée Fleming sang really beautifully in "Depuis le jour" from the line "Au jardin de mon cœur" onwards, and Ruth Ann Swenson essayed a brave and fruitful soft passage half way through Juliet's waltz. But the album's senior contributors sounded below their best, and even their younger colleagues never rose to real greatness.[8]

It was possible that this was partly to do with the disc's audio quality. Fleming's and Bryn Terfel's voices did not sound as attractive on the CD as they did when heard in person. Indeed, the playing of the Met orchestra was more enjoyable to listen to than any of the singers, and both were surpassed by the album's closing speech by Birgit Nilsson. After explaining how Swedes customarily behaved on such occasions, she said: "'But since I am a daughter of the Vikings, I will do it my way.' Then, with no more than a second's pause and no more than a semitone's adjustment of pitch, she gives vent to a mighty 'Hojotoho', and her top B-flat brings down the house".[8]

The gala was also discussed in Clyde T. McCants's American opera singers and their recordings.[9]

The gala was televised in a live transmission on PBS, and was also broadcast in Australia, Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.[2]

In 1996, Deutsche Grammophon released versions of the gala in three formats. Thirteen excerpts were released on a 72-minute CD (catalogue number 449-177-2), accompanied by a 24-page insert booklet with an essay by Cory Ellison in English, French, German and Italian, and with production photographs of Alagna, Terfel, Fleming, Domingo, Ramey, Cotrubas, Zajick, Te Kanawa, Hong, Hadley, Robbins, Swenson, Mattila, Hagegård, Kraus, Bumbry, Voigt, von Stade, von Otter, Murphy, Nilsson and Levine.[1] Twenty excerpts were issued on a 161-minute pair of CLV (constant linear velocity) CX-encoded Laserdiscs (catalogue number 072-551-1) with 4:3 NTSC colour video and digital audio.[3] The same excerpts were issued on a VHS videocassette (catalogue number 072-451-3) with 4:3 PAL colour video and digital audio.[10]

In 2005, Deutsche Grammophon released thirty-three excerpts from the gala on a 293-minute pair of DVDs (catalogue number B0004602-09), with 4:3 NTSC colour video and audio in PCM stereo and an ersatz 5.1-channel surround sound upmix in both DTS and Dolby Digital. The DVDs include an interview with Levine, a picture gallery and trailers, and are accompanied by a 12-page insert booklet with an essay by Kenneth Chalmers in English only.[2] They omit the contributions made to the gala by Maria Ewing, Gwyneth Jones, Richard Leech, Jessye Norman and Sharon Sweet, as well as an excerpt from Werther sung by Alfredo Kraus that can be heard on Deutsche Grammophon's CD.[5][4][6]

• 
  Roberto Alagna
• 
  Charles Anthony
• 
  Gabriela Beňačková
• 
  Carlo Bergonzi
• 
  Grace Bumbry
• 
  Ghena Dimitrova
• 
  Plácido Domingo
• 
  Renée Fleming
• 
  Angela Gheorghiu
• 
  Håkan Hagegård
• 
  Thomas Hampson
• 
  Kiri Te Kanawa
• 
  Alfredo Kraus
• 
  Catherine Malfitano
• 
  Sherrill Milnes
• 
  Birgit Nilsson
• 
  Anne Sofie von Otter
• 
  Juan Pons
• 
  Frederica von Stade
• 
  Bryn Terfel
• 
  Carol Vaness
• 
  Dolora Zajick
• 
  James Levine

• The Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala
• The Metropolitan Opera Gala 1991