A ‘Requiem’ to Remember

Teodor Currentzis, leading his musicAeterna orchestra and chorus in their North American debut, delivered a revelatory performance of Verdi’s work.

Teodor Currentzis and musicAeterna with soloists Zarina Abaeva, Clémentine Margaine, René Barbera and Evgeny Stavinsky PHOTO: ALEXANDRA MURAVYEVA/THE SHED

ByHeidi WalesonNov. 22, 2019 3:10 pm ET

New York

The Shed, the new performance space at Hudson Yards, professes to be dedicated to collaborations between creative partners that result in original works of art. This week’s Verdi “Requiem” was indeed revelatory, but it was thanks to the musical performance by conductor Teodor Currentzis, leading his splendid musicAeterna orchestra and chorus, not the accompanying “cinematic artwork” by Jonas Mekas. The conductor and ensemble, joined by an excellent quartet of soloists, were making their North American debut.

Born in Greece, Mr. Currentzis, age 47, built musicAeterna in remote areas of Russia, founding it in Novosibirsk in 2004, and moving it to Perm as the resident ensemble of the opera house from 2011 to 2019. They made their international mark with vivid recordings of a trio of Mozart operas, released on Sony Classical beginning in 2014, which combined the scholarship of the historical performance movement with a near-fanatical attention to musical detail, honed in marathon rehearsals.

The environment of the Shed signaled that this would not be a typical classical concert. The vast, soaring space of the McCourt had steep, bleacher-style seating, similar to the setup of the Park Avenue Armory. The orchestra and chorus entered as a group, wearing black cassock-like garments; the violinists and violists stood throughout the performance, and the wind and brass players, on tiered risers, stood when they played, giving them additional presence in the aural and visual texture. The music began in darkness; Aaron Copp’s subtle lighting changes, sometimes spotlighting particular players or singers, helped shape the 90-minute piece without calling attention to itself.

These extramusical touches backed up a consistently absorbing musical performance. Mr. Currentzis likes extremes: The melting, pianissimo tenderness of the chorus and orchestra in the opening passages made the explosive fortissimo of the “Dies irae” even more startling than usual. His choices always felt organic, from the grandest statements to the most intimate moments, and the consistent crispness of articulation from both singers and instruments—and the precision of attack and cutoff, regardless of volume—meant that details were never smeared into sheer noise. The McCourt’s acoustics seemed remarkably clear rather than reverberant; there was some light sound enhancement and acoustic paneling was installed for the performance.

The soloists— Zarina Abaeva, soprano; René Barbera, tenor; Clémentine Margaine, mezzo-soprano; and Evgeny Stavinsky, bass—were similarly distinctive, managing to serve as part of the overall texture rather than a series of star turns. All displayed rock-solid pitch and buoyant sound; their textual clarity and sparing use of vibrato helped them meld with each other in their ensemble sections, such as the quartet “Rex tremendae majestatis,” while shining in their individual pleas for salvation. These were not operatic characters, but Everyman representatives. That point was made particularly clear by Ms. Abaeva, whose pure, silvery soprano often floated above everything else. For the concluding “Libera me,” she moved from the front of the stage to stand with the chorus at the rear, where she seemed like the leader of a congregation. The instrumental soloists were similarly skilled, from the antiphonal trumpets of the “Dies irae” to the jubilant piccolo in the “Sanctus.”

Mr. Mekas’s film, shown in tandem on two screens behind the performers, was pretty but inscrutable. It began with news footage of a fire in Queens, and then settled into a sequence that was mostly shots of flowers (including gardens, house plants and wildflowers in fields) with the occasional archival photograph of a starving child or a war atrocity, or television footage of a natural disaster, dropped in. Once in a while, a bit of text translation appeared. The film was hand-held and shaky, giving it a homemade effect. It was apparently meant to serve as “an ecstatic eulogy for the natural world,” but the connection felt remote and finally, distracting. Mr. Currentzis and his band didn’t need it.

***

Christine Goerke has proved her Wagnerian mettle as Brünnhilde in the “Ring” at Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Metropolitan Opera; next summer, she makes her Bayreuth Festival debut in “Götterdämmerung.” With Isolde as the obvious next step, Ms. Goerke sang Act II of “Tristan und Isolde” in a concert at David Geffen Hall with the National Symphony Orchestra, led by its music director, Gianandrea Noseda, on Sunday.

Her performance felt like a work in progress, with only hints of the blazing, confident power that she exudes in roles like Brünnhilde and Strauss’s Elektra. Her soft-edged sound felt especially out of balance with that of her Tristan, the clarion-voiced Stephen Gould, whose ringing, stentorian tenor dominated their exchanges, especially the frantic excitement as the lovers meet. Her timbre was more appropriate to the magical mood of the love duet, “O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe;” however, Mr. Gould remained in high gear throughout, only softening at the very end of the act.

Mr. Noseda’s conducting also tended toward the driving and theatrical, letting the orchestra ride the erotic waves of lovers’ desire but missing the otherworldly enchantment of their brief moment of bliss. As Brangäne, Ekaterina Gubanova was suitably urgent in the opening scene; but as she warned the lovers of betrayal, the slow tempo brought on some excessive vibrato. Günther Groissböck brought mellifluous dignity to the grief-stricken monologue of King Marke, who discovers his wife and his best friend in flagrante.

—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

‘Akhnaten’ Review: Long Live the King

Philip Glass’s opera about the pharaoh who abolished Egypt’s polytheistic religion is a non-narrative, totally engrossing historical fantasy. 

A scene from ‘Akhnaten’ PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND/MET OPERA

ByHeidi WalesonNov. 11, 2019 3:40 pm ET

New York

Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten” (1984), which had its Metropolitan Opera premiere on Friday, demands that the audience surrender to the experience. There is no conventional narrative, and Mr. Glass’s trademark, pulsating music, rather than text or characters, carries the story. When the New York City Opera mounted “Akhnaten” in 1984, I remember my reaction to it as being mostly confusion. Here, Phelim McDermott’s captivating, thoughtful production, first staged at the English National Opera, makes the music visual, and deftly unpacks “Akhnaten”’s multiple layers. 

The opera itself is a historical fantasy. Very little is known about the 14th-century B.C. Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who renamed himself Akhnaten and abolished Egypt’s polytheistic religion in favor of a single god. After Akhnaten’s overthrow, the old religion was reinstated and all references to his brief, 17-year reign obliterated. Modern archaeological discoveries have provided some information, but both the opera and the production ask the audience to embrace the fragmentary quality of our knowledge, and to fill the empty spaces with imagination and feeling.

Tom Pye’s three-level set and projections, and Kevin Pollard’s costumes play with the familiar visual signifiers of Ancient Egypt, such as friezes of flat figures in profile, animal head masks and gold leaf, by mixing in Victorian costume elements—Queen Tye, Akhnaten’s mother, has a mink stole and a feather plume headdress; General Horemhab wears a 19th-century uniform. A close look at Akhnaten’s sumptuous coronation robe reveals that it incorporates weird wax doll heads. During the Act I funeral of Amenhotep III, white-coated figures seem to be unwrapping his shrouded body—like the costume elements, they suggest the viewpoints of the 19th-century explorers who opened the Egyptian tombs, and thus, contemporary interpretations of an ancient time. 

However, in the central scenes that define Akhnaten’s rapturous vision—such as his duet with his wife, Nefertiti, and his “Hymn to the Sun”—the Victorians are gone. Costumes are pared down to flowing, diaphanous robes, and lighting designer Bruno Poet substitutes brilliantly saturated colors for the earlier, murkier hues. 

The most unusual and ingenious scenic element is the use of 12 jugglers, choreographed by Sean Gandini, whose rhythmic, stunningly synchronized ball tossing makes Mr. Glass’s flowing, buoyant score visible, and gives texture and movement to the otherwise static dramaturgy, underscoring its ritual quality. Sometimes, the jugglers formed a background. At other moments, they became part of the story: When Akhnaten and his followers overthrew the Temple and the old gods, they became his army, juggling clubs.

The opera’s vocal text, devised by Shalom Goldman from original sources including the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” and a love poem found in a royal mummy, is recited in English by a narrator, here called Amenhotep III (the dramatic Zachary James ) and then sung by the characters and chorus in the original languages. The usual Met Titles translations are not provided for these sung passages, and several of the vocal sections have no words.

Yet, for all its strangeness, the opera makes a deep emotional connection. Much of that is due to the mesmerizing performance of Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role. From his first appearance in the coronation scene, when he walks, stark naked and expressionless, down a flight of steps at center stage, he telegraphs the vulnerability of this young ruler. His piercingly beautiful countertenor is heard for the first time in the following scene, a trio with Queen Tye (Dísella Lárusdóttir) and Nefertiti (J’Nai Bridges); the three high voices provided a sharp contrast with the weight of the male voices that dominated the opening funeral scene and symbolized the old regime. 

Mr. Costanzo’s love duet with Ms. Bridges had an erotic charge that was enhanced by their slow, deliberate movements. The “Hymn to the Sun,” the opera’s only aria, and the only passage sung in English (Mr. Glass stipulates that it is to be sung in the language of the audience), was an ecstatic, personal avowal of faith. The music of Aknahten’s death, in a rebellion, is choral and orchestral, but Mr. Costanzo’s face and body conveyed his anguish. The concluding Epilogue, also a trio with Ms. Lárusdóttir and Ms. Bridges, was a poignant, wordless vocalise and Mr. Costanzo, here weighted down again in Akhnaten’s coronation robe and stuck in a museum exhibit, seemed to be straining to escape those trappings, and remind us of what the radical young pharaoh tried to do. 

In the pit, conductor Karen Kamensek led an acutely focused performance. The violin-less orchestra captured the score’s oceanic momentum and shone in virtuosic solo moments for trombone and trumpet. The excellent featured singers included Richard Bernstein as Aye, Nefertiti’s father; Aaron Blake as the High Priest of Amon; and Will Liverman as General Horemhab—their trio represented the old guard. As Akhnaten’s daughters, Lindsay Ohse, Karen Chia-Ling Ho, Chrystal E. Williams, Annie Rosen, Olivia Vote and Suzanne Hendrix communicated the innocent, but slightly desperate tone of the scene in which Akhnaten’s family, isolated from his people, sing a wordless ensemble before they are overrun. 

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).