The Enchanted Island (Metropolitan Opera)

I've been looking forward to "The Enchanted Island" for ages. Fans may mock Peter Gelb for suggesting modern audiences aren't particularly responsive to four hour Baroque epics, but by and large I think he's at least partly right (though some productions more than make it work). The idea behind this pastiche then was to repackage phenomenal Baroque tunes into a piece for modern audiences.

An interesting idea which they've executed well though I have some misgivings. Firstly its seems singularly daft to worry about the length of conventional Baroque opera and then put together a forty plus aria, three and a half hour beast of a show. They've cut many of the individual airs, the da capo form losings its repeated A section in some cases, but the end result is still an evening with as much music as "Rodelinda". What music has been selected was largely new to me, though "Zadok the Priest" gets an inexplicable outing, but it's all as beautiful as you would predict, the Metropolitan Opera under William Christie delivering an expressive if not exactly HIP (Historically Informed Performance).

The plot is something of a Shakespeare mash-up, a blend of "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and though the end result is not nearly as good as either it just about works on its own terms (and is vastly better than "The Fairy Queen"). Jeremy Sams, who pretty much put the whole thing together, has replaced all the lyrics of the original airs and his creations are better than you might expect. Cod rhymes not withstanding he tells the story clearly, if laboriously, and even squeezes in a few decent jokes.

With so many songs to sing, it's lucky the Metropolitan Opera have assembled such a large and impressive cast. Joyce DiDonato quite brilliant consumes scenery all evening as Sycorax. She has rather too full a voice for some of the delicacy's of the music but such richness is more than worth the minor textural losses. Danielle de Niese has too small a voice for the Met, increasingly shrill the harder she pushes, but her mugging couldn't have been more appropriate to the light tone of the evening and the audience just lapped it up. Luca Pisaroni acted tremendously and though he didn't sing as much as I would have liked, proved himself a versatile singer. Rather less strong was David Daniels, who has been sick recently I believe, but who was well off the pace, sounding weak and regularly inaccurate. In smaller parts, Lisette Oropesa, Elizabeth DeShong and Paul Madore all stood out, while Anthony Roth Constanzo turned up at the 11th hour to show Daniels just how a counter-tenor should sound. Placido Domingo's barking Neptune is better not mentioned...

All this of course fails to take into account that "The Enchanted Island" isn't just about the music and text, it's every bit about Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch's ludicrously fabulous production. Projections have seldom been used with such pizazz, and the balance of technology with good, old fashioned scenery bring endless miraculous imagery to the stage. It all slips a little too far into panto occasionally, especially with de Niese's Ariel, but what a pure visual joy the evening is.

There's a lot that isn't perfect about "The Enchanted Island" but it's a joyful show that consistently raises a smile. I think it's fair to say you could probably cut a third of the music without much harm but in most other respects it's a success for Gelb and the Met. Only a couple of performances left, but I'm told it'll be back in a season or two.

(Review of Performance on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 at the Metropolitan Opera)