The best voices were the ones of Mzia Nioradze, as Konchakovna (a true warm, wonderful and deep steady sound), and Vladimir Ognovenko (an excellent Galitskij) among the principals. Zvetlina Vassileva (Jaroslavna) sounded pinched during her farewell to Igor, but she was better in the following scenes with her brother and the boyars. In the last act, her lament was excellent. Sergei Leiferkus was adequate as Igor. Vladimir Vaneev (Konchak) did not sound like a Russian bass. His tone was light. Vsevolod Grivnov (Vladimir) was adequate for this small part. Some of the best characterizations and vocal performances came from Scott Scully (Jeroshka), Joshua Winograde (Skula) and James Holloway (Ovlur). I regretted that due to the new end, the parts of both Jeroshka and Skula were cut in the last act. The conductor was Alexander Anissimov. He provided strong support, but why did he accept the strange ideas of the producer?

Due to a business trip, I missed the premiere and was able to catch one of the last performances with the premiere cast. When I entered the auditorium I was greeted by a yellow drop curtain with large floral prints. This made quite a nice impression. However, one had to change his positive opinion very quickly. The first act scenery was dominated by a cyclorama with ugly abstract paintings with very unpleasant colors. The chorus looked very ghastly, like they were attending a funeral. Gastone was made up as a gay punk with red hair, and cavorting with Alfredo to the obvious discomfort of Alfredo, and playing the piano in a most ridiculous way during the brindisi. The second act had a variation of the cyclorama with nice looking floral prints. Alfredo and Violetta were laying on a bed at the beginning of the second act. The rest of the furniture looked pretty awful. The party at Flora Bervoix's was an S & M affair, with Flora as a dominatrix. The party guests were sitting or standing on red rolling beds. The men wore cow skull headdresses, while Violetta and Douphol entered the room on a white bed! Again we had the cyclorama with abstract paintings. For the last act the room was a tuberculosis ward, I have to assume, with a row of red beds. Again the boring cyclorama was there. Violetta does not physically die on stage!!

On the musical side, things were pretty crappy. The atmosphere created by the staging and scenery did not predispose the singers to display great emotions. The Violetta, Patricia Racette, was pretty cold and unmoving. She attempted a high note in Sempre libera, and she should not have. The Alfredo, tenorino Ramón Vargas, was nondescript. He attempted O mio rimorso without a interpolated high note and the piece fell flat on its face. The Germont, Vasily Gerello, was made to act like a ruffian, which he is not, by the producer. He was never moving or vocally particularly strong. Di provenza went for nothing. His final note at Flora's party was drowned out by the orchestra. The other singers did not bring anything positive to the performance. The conductor Patrick Summers just moved things along. It was a pretty dispiriting evening.

David Gockley in his brochure promised us AN EPIC PRODUCTION, a feast for the eyes, ears and intellect created by Julie Taymor. I managed to catch the first performance, the day before my departure on a trip. It proved to be Gockley's usual fiasco pompously advertised in his usual style. Just reading the cast information in the program was the forewarning of bad things to come. The first two cast members, listed by order of appearance, were a Young Girl, and an Old Man, plus there was the mention of a choreographer and a flying sailor. As we know, those were indeed Wagner intentions! As expected, the producer could not leave the power of Wagner's music alone. There had to be a pantomime for the Young Girl and the Old Man. As far as I understood, the Young Girl was Senta, and the Old Man the Dutchman in retirement. While the Young Girl danced around in a meaningless way, the Old Man entered carrying a suitcase, walking around the stage rather aimlessly. From time to time, we saw him trying unsuccessfully to catch a moving chair, probably to retire in peace. During that masquerade, the orchestral playing was rather subdued and unwagnerian, we missed the powerful effect of that wonderful piece of music. The curtain went up, or tried to, showing a quite impressive representation of Daland's ship. However the moving structure of the ship was possibly uncomfortable for the singers and the chorus. When the curtain went up the first time, only half of the stage was exposed, both Daland and the Steuermann had to come in front of the ship to sing, since the Steuermann could not be seen as he was relegated to the top of the ship. Anyway, the curtain was brought down, and the first act started from the top when the technical problems were solved, increasing the length of the evening by 20 minutes. Things were pretty normal until the arrival of the Holländer's ship. The ship was a silly looking canoe carried by dancers, making no effect as it is made by the music. The dancers turned the canoe vertically, revealing the Holländer strapped to the bottom of his vessel. He was released from his chains, so that he could move around. The whole effect was absolutely ridiculous. While the set in Daland's house was not too bad in spite of a modern photograph of the Holländer, the final act was another brilliant idea of the producer. While we had a sort of ballet, Senta swears her loyalty to the Holländer, and walks off the stage. The Holländer, strapped again to his canoe, is raised while the Young Girl is brought down from the upper part of the stage to meet him in eternity, another effect that did not match the power of the music.

The musical side did not redeem the whole thing. The only singer with a voice capable of somehow filling the hall was Franz Grundheber as the Holländer. He would have been more impressive in a real opera house. The Senta of Sue Patchell was undernourished in the ballad, never really catching fire and quite weak in the final. I have heard better performances from Silja and Hilde Zadek (when she was over 50), both bringing magnetism and fire to the part. Daland was Gabor Andrassy, a bass at the end of his career, no bottom, no top and a wobble on long sustained phrases, certainly no Gottlob Frick. The tenor voice of Raymond Very (Steuermann) was too small, while Patrick Denniston's tenor voice was whiny. Dietfried Bernet was the conductor. In short a very depressing evening.

I missed the opening of Madama Butterfly on January 23rd as I was in Japan at that time. I also missed the first cast with Paula Delligatti (Butterfly), Paul Charles Clarke (Pinkerton), Frank Hernandez (Sharpless), Jill Grove (Suzuki) and Vjekoslav Šutej (conductor). I had a chance to hear that first cast later on, but in view of the dismal impression made by the second cast, I decided against it. The name of Francesca Zambello as the director made me suspicious of what to expect, remembering all the extravagances of her productions (starting with Fidelio in 1984 in Houston). It looked quite traditional, except that no action took place in the house rented by Pinkerton. It was replaced by scenes at the American consulate in Nagasaki. According to Zambello, it was so because of the literary sources used by Puccini. Unfortunately, she was supposed to produce Puccini's opera, not his literary sources. This made quite a mockery of the text, probably not too important here in view of the lack of operatic sophistication of the locals, who found, thanks to the surtitles, the opera again quite funny. One particularly ridiculous stage business was the entrance of the bonze. It looked very unnatural to see him standing on a pedestal that had to be pushed on stage, and off again by Pinkerton after the bonze had cursed Butterfly.

Worst was the singing: Susan Bullock (Cio-Cio-San) revealed a mature physique coupled with an over-the-hill voice. According to the British magazine Opera, always prone to overpraise British singers, she was a good Butterfly, but that must have been more than ten years ago. Vladimir Grishko, described in the program as a principal tenor at the Kirov, had no voice and no top. The climax of the act one duet was particularly painful. As usual with such a Pinkerton, Grishko did his best job during act two. Christopher Robertson, as Sharpless, was very, very discreet, while Stephanie Novacek was quite good as Suzuki. But when does a Suzuki save the show? The whole thing was conducted by Christopher Larkin.

To promote their new production of Macbeth, Houston Grand Opera mailed flyers displaying extreme poor taste. On the first page, they showed the picture of a deranged and cheap looking red haired woman displaying the silly caption "Dominant Scottish female seeks willing partner for ultimate power trip. Inquiries kept confidential." Inside the brochure, the text read among other things "...The lust for power is a fatal disease. ...HGO's all new production stars extraordinary soprano Catherina Mafiltano as Lady Macbeth...". Not a kind statement for the baritone since he has the leading role. This was followed by radio advertising following the same format with some of the text read by the syrupy voice of David Gockley, the general manager of the company. Gockley described the new production by Davis Alden as courageous, a statement that does not cast a positive shadow on things to come. Why is a production courageous? In the program notes, Alden stated that he had embraced Verdi's advice to his librettist to do something different!! He further stated that his staging will be traditional because he had too much respect for Verdi and that conventional productions of this opera are a betrayal of the exploratory spirit of the piece. He saw the focus of the piece in the dysfunctional relationship between Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and the witches!!?? After this gibberish what did we get?
The opera opens in a corridor in an hospital with two doors facing the audience and some flashy lights making looking at the stage painful. The witches appear, they are nurses rolling around corpses. Since we have, in Houston, the moronic invention of the surtitles, the majority of the audience, that does not know much about opera, keep reading the translation all evening long and turn the whole thing into an opera buffa by laughing at unfunny moments because the text does not match what they see on stage. This frustrating invention of surtitles is, for opera goers, the equivalent of outcome based education for children. It gives you a feel good fuzzy feeling but you learn nothing about opera, because you did not prepare for it. Banquo and Macbeth enter dressed in clothes from another period armed with swords. The whole thing looked ridiculous. The scene changes to the apartment of the Macbeth, which dates, I guess, from the early 1900s with a wooden armoire and a divan. The armoire is later used as a coffin for Duncan. The entrance to the room where Duncan spends his last night is an opening behind the armoire. Old portraits of Scottish kings hang on the walls. Lady Macbeth is clad in a modern red dress wearing reddish short hair. When the scene reopens in the Macbeths' living room after their coronation, the pictures on the wall are replaced by modern photographs of the couple. Banquo's murder is handled poorly. All of the approximately 30 murderers hide in full view behind fold-up tables that are held vertically. The scene changes to the ballroom, and the murderers tear off their dark coats and participate in the feast clad in multicolored party vestments. The second encounter with the witches takes place at the same place as the first one, but this time the witches are secretaries in red snakeskin suits. The procession of kings is a movie. At the end of the opera, there is supposed to be a battle. The only thing we see is Macbeth running around until Macduff enters and kills him. Finally firefighters, the soldiers I guess, crash on the proscenium after demolishing the walls of the room. The blame for this complete fiasco from the weird mind of Alden must be put on the shoulders of Gockley, the guy who thinks he knows it all. This completely miserable junk robbed the drama of its emotions and left the listeners cold.

As for the singers, Sergei Lefeirkus had a good reliable voice, he projected well and proved to be a reliable Macbeth. Catherine Malfitano as Lady Macbeth sang reliably with some strain at the top and the high D flat was not quite there. In the comprimario parts Daniel Sumegi as Banquo did very well, while Rafael Rojas, very discreet and not powerful enough in the scene of the discovery of Duncan's murder, delivered "Ah la paterna mano" as reliably as a first rank comprimario would do in this not very difficult aria. Chad Shelton as Malcolm did what was expected for that role. Simone Young conducting was reliable, if not very fiery.