\n<\/p>\n
If you go to \u201cLa Boh\u00e8me\u201d at the Metropolitan Opera this season and are convinced that the big snowdrift in Act III looks a little fresher than usual, you\u2019re not hallucinating.<\/p>\n
A million-dollar gift from a board member recently paid for the company to rebuild some of the sets<\/a> for Franco Zeffirelli\u2019s deathless 1981 production of Puccini\u2019s classic, and the snow that dominates a wintry scene on the outskirts of Paris was one of the targets. It now looks more newly fallen \u2014 though the seam between the set piece and the stage floor was gapingly obvious from the orchestra level on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n Some whiter snow was the news of this \u201cBoh\u00e8me\u201d \u2014 alongside an unusually assertive, stylish Schaunard from the young baritone Sean Michael Plumb, in a small part that often fades into Zeffirelli\u2019s teeming backgrounds.<\/p>\n Federica Lombardi\u2019s focused soprano created a Mim\u00ec more forthright, even indignant, than the norm, making her fatal Act IV more tender by comparison. The bass-baritone Christian Van Horn sang a soberly resonant \u201cVecchia zimmara,\u201d and the soprano Olga Kulchynska was a bright Musetta. As Rodolfo, the veteran tenor Matthew Polenzani pushed his voice out at climaxes but otherwise often sounded faded, and a few hairs flat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The sets for David Alden\u2019s 2012 Met staging<\/a> of Verdi\u2019s \u201cUn Ballo in Maschera\u201d<\/a> have not been rebuilt \u2014 but, only 11 years old, they sometimes seemed shakily resistant to being moved when the opera was revived on Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Here, the cast was the exciting part, at least by the end of the evening. The performance seemed to settle in as it went on, with the tenor Charles Castronovo\u2019s tone as Gustavo \u2014 pale for much of the opera \u2014 finally taking on more color, fullness and freedom.<\/p>\n And after an uncertain beginning, the soprano Angela Meade delivered a memorable Amelia. Her sound is essentially cool, but it got fuller and more inflamed as the weird, tragic plot developed, ending up lean yet glowing, like a red-hot poker.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One singer required no warming up: the baritone Quinn Kelsey, who seems ever more a pillar of the Met, particularly in Verdi. \u201cBallo\u201d is the story of a Swedish king, Gustavo, who is in love with Amelia, the wife of his closest friend \u2014 and Kelsey plays Renato, the agonized friend who goes from Gustavo\u2019s confidant to his assassin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His presence hulking and brooding, Kelsey has that most special of operatic attributes: an instantly recognizable voice, capacious and moody, with a smoky, slightly nasal, sneering, sinister edge but also a fundamental seductive smoothness and nuanced eloquence.<\/p>\n His and Meade\u2019s back-to-back arias in the third act \u2014 her plea \u201cMorr\u00f2, ma prima in grazia\u201d into his wounded \u201cEri tu\u201d \u2014 were together the musical highlight on Friday. The mezzo-soprano Olesya Petrova sang Ulrica with steady power, and the soprano Liv Redpath sounded lucid and gentle as the sprightly page Oscar. Carlo Rizzi, one of the Met\u2019s often underappreciated<\/a> maestros in the Italian repertoire, conducted both \u201cBallo\u201d (with steady drive) and \u201cBoh\u00e8me\u201d (with sumptuous clarity).<\/p>\n \u201cBallo,\u201d which premiered in 1859, is from the period after Verdi\u2019s canonical trio of \u201cRigoletto,\u201d \u201cIl Trovatore\u201d and \u201cLa Traviata,\u201d and before his late-stage epics \u201cDon Carlos\u201d and \u201cAida.\u201d In this middle period \u2014 think also of \u201cLes V\u00eapres Siciliennes\u201d and \u201cLa Forza del Destino,\u201d which the Met is presenting in a new production this winter \u2014 he experimented with shades of emotional ambiguity and sometimes jarring juxtapositions of tone.<\/p>\n In \u201cBallo,\u201d he combined elements of Italianate melodrama and champagne-bubbly French high spirits in a mixture that can be excitingly volatile. Alden\u2019s staging is a kind of stylized, largely grayscale Art Deco explosion, with a degree of strange excess intended to echo the piece\u2019s own \u2014 like a Busby Berkeley production number at the end of the first scene, complete with dancing waiters; and, in Act II, a conspirator frantically hurling himself against a wall.<\/p>\n With severely raked sets, sickly floodlighting and surreal touches like skull masks and angel wings, Alden suggests that much of the opera is Gustavo\u2019s fever dream, or fantasy. But the eerie elegance of some moments diffuses elsewhere into some awkwardness, with the chorus milling around. When it premiered, the production seemed like its many ideas hadn\u2019t yet gelled. They still haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n