Bartoli at the Met: Fresh, Perky, Surreal

It was a particular inspiration of Looney Tunes to portray opera singers, and especially the opera singers of Rossini comedy, as cartoon animals. Opera is, after all, a surreal art, not only in opera buffa plot but in the whole concept of normal speech translated into, and emotions heightened by, song.

As in dreams, the lifeblood of surrealism, one thing stands for another.

The Metropolitan Opera, however, some time ago lost its sense of the absurd, if it ever had one. It is a house with a place in the history of singing and conducting and even of character interpretation. But a sense of modern theater has not been among its strengths of late.

Finally that may be changing. Not only has the Met begun inviting interesting directors onto the premises, it has also gotten around to giving Cecilia Bartoli a starring role, unveiling a surrealistic production of Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” Thursday night for the most popular Italian singer since Pavarotti and probably the fussiest perfectionist since Callas.

The courtship between Bartoli and the Met has proceeded with excessive caution on both sides. Two seasons ago the mezzo-soprano, nervous about the size of the theater and its stage, chose to test the Met waters by making her debut with the company in a secondary role, Despina in Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutti,” which went well enough to convince her to proceed to “Cenerentola.” But then she cast new doubts about her willingness to trod the Met’s vast spaces by canceling in the company’s “Cosi” revivals and Japanese tour last spring.

There was no need to fear. Still only 31 and a singer known for her insistence on respecting the natural limits of her supple but not large voice, Bartoli remains utterly fresh-sounding. So smooth and whole is the musical line that the florid decorations of Rossini’s coloratura never seem like display but more like a cat purring.

Remarkable as her incomparable technique may be, Bartoli also integrates the singing--and purring it seems all the more--into a complete stage persona. If the Looney Tunes artists were still at it, they would have the perfect opera cat in Bartoli. She has a feline sense of surprising movement. Her attention is bright and seems scaled to the micro-second. She simply owns the stage, the way a cat owns its surroundings.

In this case Bartoli’s surroundings also had much to recommend them. She insisted on a perky and fresh Italian production team--director Cesare Lievi, set and costume designer Maurizio Balo, lighting designer Gigi Saccomandi and choreographer Daniela Schiavone--all new to the Met, who paid clever homage to Magritte, the famous Belgian surrealist.

Rossini gave his reworking of the Cinderella story much more realism than the fairy tale--no pumpkins and, thanks to Italian censors, no slippers because they would require the revealing of bare feet--and his music makes the protagonist, here known as Angelina, something of a Princess Diana character, shy and introverted, who comes to know herself through public exposure.

But there is enough absurdity in it all that one could take delight in a production with skewered furniture, a jumble of elegant stripped walls and blue sky, a cartoonish food fight and a finale with Angelina and her prince, Don Ramiro, atop a wedding cake. Dressing the chorus as Magritte caricatures of men in dark suits with bowler hats, umbrellas and briefcases was inspired.

“Cenerentola” had never before been given at the Met, which made Thursday a double premiere, since it also marked the first performance of a new critical edition of the score. James Levine conducted with a wondrous grace, keeping everything scaled just to the right level for Bartoli and a fine cast, which included a brightly sung Ramiro from Ramon Vargas, very funny and alert work from Alessandro Corbelli (Dandini the prince’s valet) and Simone Alaimo (Don Magnifico, Angelina’s boorish stepfather). Joyce Guyer and Wendy White were Angelina’s equally hilarious stepsisters.

The production will be videotaped for telecast next season on the Public Broadcasting Service, which is exactly as it should be.