A Tale of Two Sopranos, Without Levine

While classical New York continues to mourn the absence of James Levine from the remainder of the season, there is much cause for rejoicing in the sopranos at the heart of the Metropolitan Opera's current productions of Fidelio and Don Pasquale.

Karita Mattila and Anna Netrebko are very different singers. Netrebko, who works mostly with the Italian repertoire, is known for the wide tonal range of her lyric soprano and her effortless high notes. Mattila, a dramatic soprano in the process of owning the most challenging roles in the German repertoire, is known for her vocal daring and power, as well as her dramatic flair. They are two of the most exciting sopranos working today.

Beethoven's sole opera, Fidelio, occupied the composer for some dozen years, and much of the composer's frustration is heard in the beautiful music. The music of Fidelio is perhaps the greatest contrast to Donizetti's Don Pasquale score. If the music of Don Pasquale flows as naturally as a running brook, everything here is about struggle, tension, and hardened determination.

Mattila, 41, has established herself as the greatest German-opera soprano of the present age. She is also the first convincingly disguised Leonore I have seen. It's hard to imagine a Leonore who is both incredibly moving and sensual. The Finnish soprano wears her hair cropped in the new production, an aesthetic that becomes mere cosmetics as Mattila struts and swaggers like a man. Her voice, like her character, is at once muscular and yielding. The powerful bass-baritone Alan Held, who was heard earlier this season as Wozzeck, sang the villainous Don Pizarro with dark complexity.

In the other roles, Richard Margison was perhaps not the helden tenor that one wishes for Florestan, but he sang admirably and gave an account of hope-tinged despair that characterizes the whole opera. The great bass James Morris even made a cameo as Don Fernando. He was a little unsure of himself but commanding nonetheless. In the triumphant finale, the chorus rushed about a little too chaotically but sounded well-prepared and unified.

Paul Nadler, filling in for Levine, did the score justice in a solid, if not particularly revelatory, reading. The orchestra shone brightest perhaps during the thrilling and pulsating Act 2 prologue, with especial richness emanating from the full brass and percussion. In Jürgen Flimm's compelling production, the action is updated to an anonymous dictatorship somewhere in the 20th century. Robert Israel's prison sets are at once elegant and edgy and a simple and uncluttered use of the Met's cavernous stage.

A few months ago, Netrebko made headlines when she canceled a solo recital at Carnegie Hall that was to be her Carnegie debut. In the new production of Donezetti's Don Pasquale, the 35-year-old Russian soprano milks her lyric soprano to the hilt, singing with such determination and assurance that one is at a loss to understand how she could get cold feet for her Carnegie debut. On opening night of Otto Schenk's marvelous new production of Don Pasquale, she was the brightest star in a glittering cast.

Though at its roots a comedy, Don Pasquale is fraught with more human drama and pathos than most bel canto operas. Though Donizetti retains many aspects of opera buffa, it also diverges in many ways from the traditional model. Most of the opera unfolds in ensemble scenes (there being only two arias as defined in the traditional sense of the word), and the small cast performed marvelously both individually and as a team.

When Netrebko sang her first aria, there that was legitimate cause to be concerned that she wasn't saving her voice for subsequent acts. But not once during the evening did she ever sound tired or unsure. Like her physique, her voice is sexy and bright, and she has an endearing tendency to round her notes with an affecting vibrato.

Simone Alaimo in the title role was crabby and forceful, and he gave his character an appropriate amount of self-pity and sympathy. Juan Diego Florez, a satisfying lyric tenor with creamy tones, sounded vocally superb in the first act, even if his overacting got in the way of the overall performance. Before Act 3, he dropped out and was replaced by the ardent Barry Banks. Banks lent the role a suitably histrionic dimension and wowed the audience with an impassioned serenade to Netrebko, even if his high notes were a bit shaky. The lovers' duet that follows was a qualified success. Conductor Maurizio Benini dropped the tempo, and while both singers sounded great, they had trouble communicating with each other and failed to strike the sort of balance that had characterized the rest of the performance.