Met’s ‘Armida:’ Several stratospheric tenors, one down-to-earth soprano

Peter Gelb serves up an obscure Rossini cocktail to showcase Renée Fleming, but winds up leaving his customers thirsty for something better

By David Rubin
Contributing writer

Three operas kept diverting my attention as I watched the matinee performance of Rossini’s Armida (seen live by satellite relay at a movie theater in Syracuse on May 1, 2010).

The first is Handel’s Rinaldo, which has some of the same characters and is based on the same plot, which describes the seduction of a Crusader by a sorceress. Handel did it better. A lot better. Just listen to Argante’s entrance aria in the Handel (track 7 in the Rene Jacobs recording on Harmonia Mundi). If you can find it, the great bass Sam Ramey also sang this aria on a pirate recording in a performance that makes your hair stand on end. There is nothing Rossini wrote in Armida that sticks in the ear like this aria, and this is just one of the many delicacies in the Handel.

The second is Verdi’s Ernani. It was his fifth opera and first big success (Nabucco not withstanding). It premiered in Venice in 1844, 27 years after Armida. Already Verdi was demonstrating his ability to match his music to the text, to project emotion beyond the words, and to create characters who could connect with the audience. Armida is Rossini’s 21st opera, and it follows all his operas that have held the stage, including The Barber of Seville, Cinderella, and The Italian Girl in Algiers. Either Rossini was writing on automatic pilot at this point, or he was simply disinterested in this plot. But he demonstrates in Armida none of the young Verdi’s ability to create flesh and blood characters who sing music that reflects their emotions and the storyline. Time and again in Armida I asked myself, "What is supposed to be happening here? Why does this sound like Cinderella?" Doctor Bartolo establishes more personality in the ten minutes he sings ""A un dottor della mia sorte," sputtering about his feisty ward Rosina, than Armida and all six of her tenors communicate in three hours of music.

The third is Rossini’s own William Tell, his last opera, which he wrote in 1829.  I understand why the Met mounted Armida: to capitalize on Renée Fleming, its reigning box office queen. But if the Met’s GM Peter Gelb wanted to do a truly great, unheard Rossini opera, he should have offered William Tell, which has as much memorable music in it as any Verdi opera until Macbeth and Luisa Miller, or perhaps even Rigoletto. Gelb could have cast tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who sang splendidly as Rinaldo in Armida, as the tenor lead in Tell. He is up to it.

But since I wasn’t watching any of these three operas, I had to focus on Armida. The Met performed it uncut, and with two intermissions, it ran from 1 p.m. to almost 5. The most engaging music and singing comes in the third and last act, when two Crusaders come to pry Rinaldo away from his love nest with Armida. We get an unusual and arresting trio for three tenors followed by a long stretch of wicked coloratura singing by Armida in which she tries to hold onto Rinaldo. When he rejoins his Crusader pals nonetheless, she then decides to take vengeance on him for abandoning her to return to the siege of Jerusalem. (If Rinaldo only knew how fruitless that would be from the perspective of 2010, he would have remained in the love nest.)  

Inexplicably, the opera ends without our knowing whether Armida exacts her revenge. It just ends. Perhaps Rossini had had enough. Certainly the audience had.

The Met sold this antique as a chance to hear Fleming and those six tenors. In the event, there were only five tenors, with Barry Banks doubling up on two of the parts. One of the tenor parts is really so small that it comes and goes before you notice the singer. So this left four tenors. Brownlee exhibited an amazing two-octave range from D to D. The voice is beautiful to hear, without any of the pinched or nasal singing that characterized some Rossini tenors in the 1970s. (Do you remember Rockwell Blake?) As an actor he is much better as the comic Almaviva than the heroic or love-sick Rinaldo. His face is too sweet and open to mimic a villain. But there is no doubt that Brownlee will be singing Rossini and Mozart with great skill for the next 20 years.

Barry Banks showed more personality in the roles of Gernando, the villain whom Rinaldo murders in a duel in Act One, and then as Carlo, who rescues Rinaldo in Act Three. Banks’s voice is not as honeyed as Brownlee’s, but it cuts through the orchestra and is thrilling on top. He also has greater range as an actor.

John Osborn delivered the first big tenor aria in Act One as Goffredo, the head of the Frankish Crusaders. He, too, gave great pleasure, with a big, pleasant sound and handsome presence. He is worth watching. The fourth tenor was Kobie van Rensburg, who has sung Handel before at the Met and was Ubaldo in Armida. He sounded a bit hollow and worn. Banks was by far the stronger of the two Crusaders who rescue Rinaldo. That aforementioned trio for Brownlee, Banks and van Rensburg in Act Three, when Rinaldo decides to return to the fight and abandon Armida, was strongly delivered by all three and well worth hearing. Indeed, how often is one going to hear any trio for tenors?

So this brings us to Fleming, who sings about as much music herself as do all her tenors combined. The voice remains creamy and well produced. She was at her strongest when Rossini let her rage about her loss of Rinaldo. Her love duets with Brownlee were glorious. She sang a bit cautiously. She admitted twice in intermission features (not seen by the audience at the Met) that she has to pace herself carefully to get through this part, and that it takes great stamina. That she can sing it at all at this stage in her career is a marvel. Next season she will return to Strauss, her home base, with Capriccio, another rarity, but this one worth her time and talents.

Ingmar Bergman himself couldn’t bring life to these stick figures, so it was no surprise that director Mary Zimmerman couldn’t either. She pretty much let her principles stand and deliver. She didn’t try to layer any grand concept onto the creaky plot, such as it is. We didn’t get any of the nonsense of her La Sonnambula from last season. She ruined that piece by presenting it as an opera rehearsal within an opera, leaving the audience totally confused. Zimmerman wasn’t helped by her choreographer, the Broadway veteran Graciela Daniele, or costume designer Richard Hudson. Daniele produced an interminable and totally unnecessary ballet in Act Two that concluded with evil spirits, complete with horns and rat tails, prancing around in white tutus. Hudson managed to make the glamorous Fleming look frumpy in a succession of prom dresses that no self-respecting sorceress would wear.

Conductor Riccardo Frizza kept things moving after one of the dullest overtures Rossini ever wrote.

Gelb can be rightly criticized for what he spent of the Met’s budget to mount this museum piece. Nevertheless, Rossini specialists, fans of Fleming, and lovers of stratospheric tenor singing are in his debt. The rest of us await next season’s Ring operas, Boris, Don Carlos, Fanciulla del West and more with great anticipation.

David M. Rubin is Professor and Dean Emeritus at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He teaches in the School’s Goldring Arts Journalism program.

Details Box:
What: Rossini’s Armida, Simulcast Live in HD
When: May 1, 2010
Who: Metropolitan Opera
Time: About 4 hours, including 2 intermissions
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York