Divamensch

[Note: this review was extracted from a full travelogue. You can find it under the Travel Etc tab on the homepage.]

 

*Hotel Metamorphosis* was our first Salzburg opera, a mashup of excerpts from Vivaldi operas and spoken text from Ovid’s *Metamorphosis.*

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It was directed by Barrie Kosky with Les Musiciens du Prince Monaco conducted by Gianluca Capuano. Clearly I need to listen to more Vivaldi because it knocked me out. The overture had some seriously strange harmonies, that was a nice surprise.

 

The set was an elegant, slightly chilly upscale hotel room, a bed in the center, chairs on the right, desk on the left, bathroom in the back. 

 

Angela Winkler was the narrator, reciting stories by Ovid in German (thankfully translated into English in the supertitles). The orchestra played the intro to the first aria and Cecilia Bartoli made an entrance that was a low-key variation on a star entrance. The door to the hotel room slowly swung open, of its own accord, and she was standing in the doorway. The lighting was a little dim so it wasn’t 100% clear that it was her but she’s pretty distinctive. She started singing and there was no doubt at all.

 

Bartoli is 59, she was a big star in the US in the 90s. Neither of us had heard her live and whoa Nelly what a voice, what a singer, out of this world. Scott directed me to an article in The New York Times which explained why she hasn’t sung in the US since 1998 - - she doesn’t like to fly. She hinted in the article that she might come back to the US sometime soon. Can you imagine being on an ocean liner with La Bartoli? BTW this show would travel very easily to BAM or San Francisco Opera or the Lyric Opera of Chicago or wherever. Please, Signora Bartoli, ritorna!

 

The first scene was not connected to any particular Ovid story, it had Bartoli and Winkler playing tender, middle-aged lovers. The scene ended with Bartoli laying down in the bed and slowly, at first imperceptibly, being swallowed into the bed.

 

Winkler told the story of Pygmalion and the story was dramatized using Vivaldi excerpts. This is the way it worked for the whole show - - the Ovid story told by Winkler (speaking with no music) then a dramatization of the story in which the text was sort of germane but not exactly on the nose. More abstract and creative than that.

 

The singer playing Pygmalion was the only one besides Bartoli I had heard of, counter tenor Philippe Jaroussky. I was honestly not so taken with him, his voice sounded a little thin and effortful to me. He wasn’t bad but he didn’t rise up to the level of the other three amazing singers in the cast.

 

Bartoli was back playing Arachne in the next scene, wearing a stunning silk ensemble, a matching tunic, pants, and turban. Some enterprising Salzburg boutique could display a knockoff in their window and it would fly off the shelves. At least I think it would.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Varduhi Abrahamyan played Minerva in this scene. Gorgeous voice but her music didn’t quite live in the sweet spot of her voice, she couldn’t always project in her low voice.

 

The final story of Act One was Myrrh. Like many of the Ovid stories, this was one I didn’t know. Myrrh was a young woman who was shamefully attracted to her father. She confessed this to her maid and her maid set them up on a date in the dark so he wouldn’t know who she was. They were both horrified when they realized and she turned into a tree. Myrrh was played by mezzo Lea Desandre, who was sensational. Gorgeous voice, beautiful feeling for the style, nearly as good as Bartoli. The most interesting element of this scene was that a story about incest can still be shocking in this day and age. It was staged in a way that you could feel the shame of Myrrh. The music did a lot to convey that.

 

I need to mention the dancers. The choreography was by Otto Pichler - - ten dancers, five men and five women, all of them fabulous. The dancing added so much to the success of the evening. The choreography was inventive, witty, highly expressive, with an occasional winking anachronism. The party that started Act Two had the dancers briefly doing The Charleston. This Myrrh scene had a show-stopping sequence for four of the male dancers, playing Myrrh’s suitors.

 

Act Two started with the chorus and dancers in full *Satirycon* drag, amusing. This led to Jaroussky playing Narcissus. The image of Narcissus falling in love with his reflection was conveyed by using two dark-haired male dancers with a similar build, both wearing tidy whities, dancing in a way that illustrated the reflection.

 

This led to a scene about Juno and Echo, done by Abrahamyan and Desandre. They found a couple of Vivaldi pieces that had an echo built in, that was sort of wondrous.

 

The final story was Orfeo and Eurydice, with Winkler (the narrator) playing Orfeo and Bartoli playing Eurydice. Holy crap, what sublime singing, knocked me on my ass.

 

Scott and I both felt like *Hotel Metamorphosis* was not only the best opera we saw on this trip but one of the best shows we had ever seen.

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