First review: Asmik Grigorian makes a muted Met debut
OperaReview for slippedisc.com by Susan Hall:
Asmik Grigorian, the toast of Europe and Carnegie Hall, made her Metropolitan Opera debut last night as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly. Her international career began with a ravishing Cio-Cio San sung in Stockholm. She sang the role a few years ago in Vienna, which used the same production the Met does: Anthony Minghella’s ravishingly beautiful interpretation. Now at the Met, Xian Zhang conducts.
Patricia Racette sang the role first at the Met and shuffled. This helped to make Cio-Cio-San a very credible young girl. Ms. Grigorian walks with a grown-up step, offering an older geisha. She does not flutter like a butterfly. Instead, her arms are extended wide as wings.
The ceremonial de-flowering of Cio-Cio San and her ritualistic suicide bracket a central vigil, as Butterfly, her son by the American Lieutenant Pinkerton, and Suzuki her maid, await the arrival of Pinkerton’s ship years after he left town and a pregnant geisha.
The opera is unusually still. Butterfly’s home is the setting. In Japan, the mistress of the house and the house itself are merged. Action is interior and stylized, which may not best display Ms. Grigorian’s dramatic style. Her Salome and Chrysothemis in Elektra were electrifying in Salzburg’s Festspielhaus.
Minghella aimed to make the stillness of the opera meaningful. Ms. Grigorian does stillness well. She has captivating phrasing that reflects emotion and character. Her dynamics are impeccable. Yet tones are not variously colored and in some passages, her voice does not ride over the orchestra.
Ms Grigorian is best heard and seen close up. It may also be the European opera houses which don’t exceed 2200 seats benefit her. (The Met has 3776 seats).
Geraldine Farrar debuted the role in America in 1907. Her voice was small. Yet she performed Cio-Cio-San 139 times. Although she apparently didn’t have Ms.Grigorian’s dramatic skills, she had a wild group of followers, the Gerry-Flappers. Busloads of high school students, some from as far away as Rhode Island, filled the Met Opera House for the debut. Will Ms. Grigorian attract a passionate following too?
Well, I don’t believe it
Cristina Gallardo-Domas debuted this production at the Met, not Pat Racette.
Does this qualify as an actual review? Rather more a few random jottings committed to a phone on the subway home.
Sounds like it was written by a robot or chatbot. Drones on and on and on.
I’m not sure the wonderful Asmik is actually capable of “muted”.
sorry she is a total miscast in all Puccini and just enjoys a favorable press mostly in German papers – a very much overrated singer but wonderful in some suitable repertoire
Here’s someone who has never heard her live in a Puccini opera in an actual opera house.
To answer your question: Yes.
I was there and found a voice big enough to fill the house without sacrificing any beauty. Butterfly of course is intended to wring an emotional response from the audience. Like Scotto in the same house decades ago, Grigorian does. Looking forward to future roles at the Met.
Please don’t compare wonderful Scotto with the right Italian timbre to Grigorian who isn’t a great casting here
A current trend at The Met, initiated by Y N-S, is that the orchestra is too loud much of the time. I guess it’s supposed to make the music more ‘exciting’. Asmik is just the latest victim.
He does the same excessive volume in Philadelphia, most recently in his garish Mahler 7, a piece I love.
I will confess to loving his garish Mahler 7 with Esteban Battalan guesting as principal trumpet, playing Bud Herseth’s instrument. Fantastic. But chacun………
It’s the conductor’s fault. The orchestra wasn’t too loud for Scappucci in Rondine a couple of weeks back. Speaking of the conductor’s fault – just because the conductor can hear the singers over the orchestra (they’re 20 feet away) doesn’t mean those of us in the middle or back of the house can. And that Humming Chorus had the chorus so far “offstage” that they were barely audible – and no “humming effect” because too pianissimo. To quote Bernstein – “You have to do your homework.”!
It’s more often the opposite, actually. In most theaters, the conductor has the worst seat in the house with regards to balance. Often, the orchestra sound in the pit is deceptively overwhelming, and if the conductor can barely hear the singer over the orchestra, then usually the balance in the hall is right. Again, this varies from house to house but I’ve often had to lip-read in culminations but was told I was not covering anyone. Singers carry over the pit into the hall.
…..but not on this occasion I assure you as I was in the auditorium………
But Y N-S wasn’t conducting was he?
At least in this review Susan Hill manages to make a few brief comments on how singer actually performed. That is progress.
She was a splendid Turandot in Vienna last year. I am shure she is a splendid Butterfly at the Met now.
I was there. Barone in the NYT review has it all right…..
Asmik’s debut as Butterfly last evening at the Met. Of course a sensation. Vocally very fine and – the acting. Minghella’s production has her death halfway upstage in a very stylized manner with ribbons appearing to represent her blood. I’ve seen this thing about 12 times (wife’s favorite opera). Here Asmik turns to realism, twitching away after slicing her jugular and waiting for Pinky to show up – then reaching an arm out for il bimbo. Gutting. People crying on the way out. Full value as we say in Yorkshire. Tetelman was sick. He is no fool, with all the critics there for AG he wasn’t going to risk a bad review. This was very disappointing to me but more to the gent to my right who knew him as a boy chorister in Princeton and he said family members travelled a long way to see him. His replacement, Chad Shelton, did the best he could with what he had (a V6 voice where a V8 is needed). Full marks considering he had no notice and minimal if any rehearsal. Xian Zhang conducted with no grasp of Puccini style and his lovely orchestral effects were subsumed in a generally too loud accompaniment. Mind you, she was flailing away on the podium as if she were conducting the Rite of Spring, and thank heavens the Met Orchestra knows how this goes, but with enormous sweeping gestures and windmill arms in even the quietest music how could it not be too loud? Bring back Scapucci!
Let’s start with the basics. There was nothing muted about the immense, delirious and frenetic ovation that greeted Asmik Grigorian at the end of the opera. It was an unqualified TRIUMPH!!!! I was sitting in the first row of the Grand Tier, and perched on that most advantageous point I can state unequivocally that at no point was she ever covered by the at-times-loud orchestra. Furthermore, her approach to act I was delicate and ethereal, though at no point her soft singing less than carried and projected gorgeously to every corner of the theater. And then in the second half she opened up and gave a breathtakingly dramatic performance! In an otherwise gloriously inventive production, I’ve always been baffled by how ludicrous the staging of the suicide is! placing the soprano half way upstage! This insensitive disregard for basic operatic conventions (yes I mean you cannot hear the soprano!!!) has defeated every single one of the versions I have seen, from the beginning to the otherwise excellent Elena Burrato to the ludicrously underpowered and unfit (for this big heavy dramatic part) as the canary-light Kurzak of recent memory. But not Grigorian!!! who from half way upstage just flooded the theater with an outpouring of glorious tone, right over the very raucous orchestra!!! It was a TRIUMPH, yes with capital letters, and the inevitability of the immense ovation that would ensue we could all sense as the curtain calls began.
I really fail to understand how anyone could have called this debut muted!
While a voice of her scale and luxurious color to my taste should have debuted in something far more appropriate, such as Salome, or Senta (minus the awful Lyniv at Bayreuth!), or Marie in Wozzeck, this was truly a debut for the ages, and I dearly hope for many returns of Grigorian to the Met. The only singer today apt for the dramatic repertoire and who also supplies abundant musicality and phrasing. She is orders of magnitude better than her mooted contenders for the great dramatic throne that has been vacant for so long. If only Netrebko had applied herself to German…. And yes there are others with large sounds but zero musicality or phrasing. This is the voice we have been waiting for! Finally!!
Bravo. I was sitting in the same row as you. You put it all perfectly, even agreeing with me that the orchestra was too loud. Yes. And while I’m at it, Zhang ain’t a Puccinian. She should stick to symphonic work (at which she is good!). Shelton has no squillo at all, but did well enough given that Zhang did her best to drown him.
Well the first two rows of the Grand Tier are ideal places to judge whether a dramatic voice in Europe is apt or even adequate for the immensity of the Met auditorium!!! I think we both happily agree that the glorious Asmik Grigorian passed that test with flying colors!!!! but even more impressive to me was that she exhibited a musicality and sublime phrasing that has been absent from the Met for a long time, with the exception of Netrebko, who unfortunately decided to forgo the German repertoire, to a large extent, and certainly at the Met!
You also describe much better than I did the suicide. It is theatrically a magnificent moment, as you brilliantly describe! But unfortunately not for the poor soprano who has to sing Tu tu piccolo … from that far distance upstage it is just cruel. But not for the glorious Grigorian who just flooded the theater with her thrilling molten sound!!!
Yes you are absolutely right, both about the seats and her sound at the very end. Having seen her gut wrenching suicide in Suor Angelica at Salzburg I was expecting some realism and we got it. At that Angelica I was sitting between Neil Fisher from the London Times (he described the performance as “poleaxing”) and a male German member of the European parliament. We all needed kleenex. It’s what opera is about…………
In in interview with AP news Peter Gelb stated “My only regret is not having booked her sooner.” Yer think?
That goes for many zan another singer, those casting at the met have NO clue
Yes. I am excited to (finally) see Corinne Winters in Boheme – saw her in Katya Kabanova at Salzburg – really TREMENDOUS!
Muted? I have been in the audience and what I saw was everything but muted. It was thrilling and exhilarating. Never was a big fan of Md Butterfly but I am converted now. No joke – there was a gout of teenage girls behind us. When we went at the end to get out they were wheeping.
Too bad that Tetelman was out sick (allegedly with allergies) but I got another set of tickets hoping for the best.
New York Times Review!
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/28/arts/music/asmik-grigorian-madama-butterfly-review.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
I was in the house on 26 April. Gregorian made a splendid debut and interpreted the role as well as I’ve heard it from a perfect entrance Dflat through a stunning che tua madre and ei torna e m’ama! which had ovation “a scena aperta” and a final act as devastating as I’ve experienced. The voice is not huge but quite well placed that it cuts the Met’s vastness easily. This in spite of a physical production which provides no baffle and a conductor uselessly flapping her arms throughout the performance. This from a seat in a balcony box. Look forward to hearing more at the Met from her.
Completely right.