The Met’s Carmen troubles just got worse
OperaThe Polish tenor Piotr Beczala turned up as Don Jose for last night’s showing of the Met’s new Carmen but audience members tell us he was far from his best:
Mr. Beczala returned for Jan 5th performance and, most respectfully, should not have. Fatigue and/or illness still have the upper hand. He was straining by Act I, vocal cords were completely fatigued in Act III, and he no longer had any connection in the upper register in Act IV. Very painful to watch him struggle through, and I’m sure painfully embarrassing for him.
Beczala was fine. His voice noticably broke a little during the last 10 minutes or so of Act IV. I was so happy to see him. I thought he sounded really good overall and brought a lot of emotional depth to the character. I also loved the new production and I am baffled by the reviews. I thought the more contemporary setting made the story and the psychological journey of these characters very clear. I’m really sad that the critics were not able to look at this with a more objective eye and it feels like people want to keep kicking the Met while it’s dealing with a lot of financial struggles and uncertainty.
Totally disagree. I was there and it was clear that he was not well. He cracked his way thru act 2, and the rest of the opera was a head scratcher. Why does such a consummate artist make such an embarrassing and ill-advised decision to risk damage to throat and reputation to sing acts 3 and 4 with no notes above the staff. We love your Piotr, but this was a whiff by singer, music staff and management. When you have a very capable cover waiting, why do you punish the ticket buyer like this?!
I only experienced this once, in a Met broadcast of Otello. It was painfully obvious from the first note the tenor sang that he was ill. Mercifully he retired after the first act. After that I never complained when a singer cancelled at the last minute.
I was at that performance of Otello. It was 1979 or 1980 and the tenor was Richard Cassily. The first act love duet was so painful that one could feel the entire Met audience cringing in unison. After a prolonged intermission, one Edward Sooter finished the opera.
Cassilly was fantastic the Tues performance before earlier in the week. One of the best Otellos I ever heard. I know he really wanted to sing that Sat broadcast but was just too sick. There are several wonderful broadcasts of his Otello. One from Tanglewood with Leinsdorf & one from London with Solti. One of the best!
I hope Piotr was not pressured into coming back too soon. He is too fine an artist to be subjected to performing when he knows he should recover and rest.
Sending best wishes…
Where I wonder were the Met’s Music Staff to assess the tenor’s ability to get through the role after illness?
Judging from the current state of voices on the Met stage, exactly who on the Met’s music staff has the experience and ability to make such a vocal judgement about a singer of Mr. Beczala’s earned status?
The MET stuff has zero imput on deciding if a singer is ill/or not; only a doctor and the artist itself (only exemption is when during the rehearsal process/or dress rehearsal an artist shows his inability to perform the part, he can be removed/paid off/replaced from his contracted duties. His only cover, Rafael Davila who took over his first two performances was in the green room ready in the costume to go on for Beczala, if needed, but Beczala had choosen to sin the entire performance. The question I cannot answer if Beczala was pressured to go on by Gelb (or anybody else from the higher management, despite obviously being still not well/or recovered; because I wasn’t the fly on the wall when these discussions/phone calls happened.
“Beczala had chosen to sin the entire performance….”
How appropriate in the circumstances, but surely Bizet’s “Pêcheurs de Perles” would have been even more so for a true Sinner! ( Désolé, je pèche par mes jeux de mots!)
Just for your info: There are many cast changes, even in mid performance. MET used to have two covers for all leading roles until the arrival of Gelb. Examples: When Warren died in middle of his big scene in Forza in 1960; or Versalle at the beginning of MET’s first ever Makropulos in 1996 – those were cancelled; but in 1989 when Dernesch as Amme fainted in Act 1 of Frau ohne Schatten, Act one was never finnished; but her cover D.Curry rushed in and signing Acts 2&3; or Domingo as Siegmund in 2009 was suffering from high blood pressure notified the MET that he will try to go on, but his cover G.Lehman was ready in costume to go on and Domingo performed about first 5 minutes, slowly walked off and Lehman walked on the set without any interruption, or missing a single note. I myself in mid 80-ies gave an order to cancel a Aida after the Act 3, when a Spanish Radames suffered a heart attack and we did not know, if was going to make it (which he later did, thank God); so Shakespeare may have called your reply a “Beaucoup de bruit pour rien, n’est-ce pas ?” 🙂
When a singer that experienced says he’s fine to go on, he doesn’t want/need a bunch of staff members second guessing him. The responsibility is on the artist and him alone.
I was there. In my opinion, I thought Beczala had the best voice of the cast! Projection, pronunciation, musical lines – although some questionable intonation from the get-go.
However he imploded at the end of the third act and the rest was a complete vocal disaster.
The “[…] No longer had any connection in the upper register” is an understatement. He cracked repeatedly on every high note of the fourth act. Like teenage voice cracks. I don’t know how he kept his cool and I have to say that for better or worse it will be a moment I’ll never forget.
The rest of the cast seemed very supportive during the bows which was interesting.
Also, the staging/production is just awful. Sure, do the modern staging but make it friendly to vocal projection and ensemble (which was mediocre). No, the rotating set is not cool if the chorus is late. The strobe light effect was distracting. And 40 minutes is too long for an intermission.
Lastly, does the MET care about pronunciation? I understand that French is challenging to sing but when I, as a native speaker, can’t pick up a single word from some of the singers on stage (who are paid in the tens of thousands for every show) I think something is lost.
I sincerely wish everyone at the MET all the best. As a fan of opera, it always has been a privilege to visit this institution when I’m in NYC.
He is correct in his comments about the language and it is important in Carmen, even if the dialogue is mostly cut nowadays.
Alagna sang the part better than anyone contemporary and where are the great French sopranos today now that Dessay has almost left the stage?
Well Clementine Margaine is returning soon to sing the mezzo role of Carmen………
Yes I don’t get all this acclaim for Akhmetshina – her sung French is awful. She barely gives any sense that she has a clue what she’s singing about.
“Audience members have told”….Ohhh boy….
I would always trust audience members more than any critic/review
Really? What about the common habit of singers (only a few get away with it) – immediately after a performance, they post links to reviews, quotes from reviews on their Fb page or Instagram? (only the favourable ones, of course). Piotr Beczala himself is one of the most likely to post reviews.
The influence of personal social media posts by artists, at least among most opera goers, is highly over-rated. For opera companies, even less. Yet they continue to pour money down that hole.
1) A man’s got to eat, we’ve all shown up at work when we were still sniffling and coughing, much to the consternation of our colleagues, but sometimes a job’s gotta get done, the inbox is piling up, and you gotta get paid, and the mortgage gotta get paid, the kids are crying at home, the wife is complaining…
2) I heard a singer crack once, it was like seeing a trapeze artist falling off… You can’t predict it, and when it happens, you can’t stop it…
3) Yes, French is very hard to sing, and even when you listen to native French singers, they over-articulate in a way that is special just to singing their own language (like rolling the r’s and aspirating the consonants and opening up the vowels), it is definitely a technique one has to learn from a native coach.
He could have gone home at intermission and received his full fee. The problem may have been that the Met did not want to pay his cover a full performance fee to sing half of the show when they’ve already paid him. His decision to sing the entire show was not financially motivated in that sense. I certainly appreciate him giving it the old college try, but he was not well. One wonders how an artist of his distinction allows himself to return to the stage when he knows what’s going to be a disaster, which it was.
I have no idea what happened at this performance, and perhaps he was not fully recovered, but yes pressure to return, make money etc are a real concern and sometimes that added pressure can cause tension in the body that can exacerbate the situation. Knowing that people say things like this stuff about you the minute you crack doesnt help. Think of singers as high level athletes… sometimes you have to compete with an injury, it may turn out ok and it may not, but the stakes are proprtionally just as high….saying that the performers get paid “tens of thousands” is a MAJOR overstatement. Only the top 1 percent are getting that, and what you dont understand is that singers have to pay for housing at their engagements of this length and everything else including whatever else is happening (house, spouse, children etc). Most artists at the Met make quarter or less than people like Piotr. They are independent contractors who have to pay for healthcare and everything just like everyone else in the world, only if they dont perform, they dont get paid. Imagine calling in sick for your job and knowing you are going to lose a months worth of income. It might make you consider going to work sick. Also, of course his colleagues were supportive…they know how hard it is!
To say nothing of investing in six weeks of rehearsal with little or no pay …
I do not disagree about your opinion, that the MET pays only a fraction of European houses doas a singers fee per night, plus you have to pay for everything else. But the question here was, if it was a wise decision of Beczala/or allowing himself of being pushed into service (by whom ever at the MET) on january 5, 2024 to sing Don Jose. I agree with you again that he does get paid more than other tenors, because of his status of being a leading tenor. But remember that he does profesionally sings for 32 years, such has a high milage on his vocal cords and at 58 years of age (not trying to be impolite), obviously needing a bit more time to recover from a flu, as compared when he was 28, or 40. Also he can afford to cancel a few shows, in order to preserve his so far amazing quality record of his own vocal standards, but as a new generation “Gedda” 🙂 needs to be more careful when adding roles like Radames, Lohengrin, Don Jose to his rep. Remember that people like A.Kraus and Gedda had long vocal longevity, because understanding that they needed to sing a limited amount of performaces of a role of Lohengrin (as Gedda), or dropped Cavaradossi after finnishing a sole role debut run (both Gedda and Kraus) in order not to damage their vocal cords. Del Monaco isn’t alive, so Beczala could not be called a Nemorino in Thebes 🙂 as Del Monaco called Carreras after his Salzburg debut as Radames (maybe if alive he would commented as Lensky in Thebes)…but there is a saying “Everybody is a builder of his happiness” and opera business can be cruel, you may sing well for decades, but if you have a single bad night (for what ever reason), because of media’s everybody may know about it the next day (thanks to social medias and thy will not defend his own artistic record, but criticize the bad night……….It is not fair, especially in his case with an amazing stellar performance record. Certain tenors of today are gone in few years, but Beczala still sings well after 32 years when his physical and vocal condition is not effected by an illness.
The singer must make it through to the first intermission or they don’t get paid. He/she is also responsible for their own housing and expenses in NY, and Piotr always travels with his wife.
It’s AGMA who is at fault here for allowing performers to be paid in this matter; singing sick is dangerous and no singer should be under such pressure in order to survive.
To my knowledge, Mr. Beczala accumulated enough welth in 32 years of his singing careeer in order to be able to cancel a few performances, when he is medically ill. He is by no standarts a frequent singer who cancels often, like lets say as example Caballe, or Stratas was in the past or Semenchuk in the present. He also does not need to play the game to ollect his paycheck and cancel after act one (again as Baltsa did in several Carmen’s as a retaliation for not favorable reviews); so what is the point of your post please? Claiming that Beczala depends on his paycheck to be able to bring his wife and stay in New York City? IMHO I do not share your wiev, which is simply silly.
What is the Met playing at? No singer should have been required to go through what Beczala suffered. Humiliation! He was clearly off form at the start and by the end of Act IV was missing every high, heart-rending ‘Carmen’ – the apex of the whole work. Truly shocking.
Nobody “required” him to do anything. You should educate yourself about the industry before you post your “truly shocking” posts.
Give this great singer some slack
He did not sing for the money, he has pride and that drew him to perform.
I have heard healthy singers crack and sound bad. Beczala was recovering from a very bad illness with high temp. Enough people!!!
According to a school guidance counselor I know, Gelb is papering the house with tickets for high school students.
That’s for final dress matinees, not paid evening performances
High school students have been given tickets to dress rehearsals forever. They generally are seated in the Family Circle. That’s a great program the Met has been doing for decades and decades to expose kids to opera. They did it when when I was in high school and before (I’m 70).
No one “pays” for dress rehearsals. The rest of the audience at rehearsals is made up of patrons who donate money to the Met. So much for your guidance counselor’s “shocking” revelation.
But appreciate the correction, making this a non-issue and just plain snarky…..
At least hours prior to curtain time Beczala withdraw from the January 10, 2024 performance and was again replaced by his only cover Rafael Davila. I wish Beczala a speedy recovery, but the HD telecast is in two weeks, maybe time for the MET to secure a better cover for Beczala, if he will not be still not well enough to perform.
He sang on the 12th, but have not heard how he was. Beczala on his worst day is better than most tenors on their best! Not to mention that he’s just an overall nice, accessible guy who seems extremely dedicated to his work.
I remember when Stratas cancelled LULU and the TV Broadcast went on with someone else. I think Peter Gelb either hates opera or the Met audience…