Javier Camarena and Diana Damrau in Vincenzo Bellini's La Sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera; photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

La sonnambula, Bellini’s opera, is known as a soprano vehicle: Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, and others have ridden it to great success. But there is a lot of tenor singing in it, and the Metropolitan Opera had a very good tenor working on Friday night.

He was Javier Camarena, a Mexican. He owns a beautiful voice, and knows what to do with it. He was nimble, fresh, and winning. We could always use such bel canto tenors: Man cannot live on Juan Diego Flórez alone.

And this brings up a question that has been on my mind: What is it about Latin America and tenors? If it were not for this one region of the world, we would have been very short on tenors these last fifteen, twenty years.

In addition to his vocal gifts, Javier Camarena is very polite. I noted this in a review three years ago. He was singing in the Met’s Barber of Seville, which has the relevant character (Almaviva) enter through the house itself. As he was striding down the aisle, Camarena brushed against my crossed leg. He whispered, “Excuse me,” then sang his opening notes.

La sonnambula is not only a tenor vehicle and a soprano vehicle, it is also a choral vehicle: The chorus has a big part to play in this opera, and the Met’s played it very, very well. I can use the same words I used about the tenor: nimble, fresh, and winning. (And it is harder for a chorus to be nimble than it is for an individual.)

You may not call Sonnambula a “conductor’s vehicle,” but the conductor is key here. It may not be obvious. The conductor is obviously key in Wagner, or Strauss. But bel canto? Doesn’t he just have to keep the motor running? There is a lot more to it than that. The conductor can make the difference between a lively, bracing, enjoyable evening of bel canto and a bland one.

For the Met, Marco Armiliato performed superbly. He brought out everything La sonnambula has, including tension, energy, and beauty. All through it, he showed excellent judgment. He gave us the gift of being able to forget about him. You didn’t have to worry about the conducting, knowing that all would be well.

The orchestra did a very fine job for him, with even the horns behaving.

Now to the soprano, at last—our sonnambula, our sleepwalker. She was Diana Damrau, the German star. In the early going, she was perfectly adequate. But she sounded slightly frayed and effortful. She is well into mid-career, I suppose. Has some of that miraculous suppleness gone? Has she become more human?

Not really. She is still superhuman, as she proved later in the evening. She hit her stride, putting on the kind of display that made her famous. The voice and technique are basically intact, and the adorability definitely is. Has anyone ever done adorability better than Damrau? At the end of the show, she turned two cartwheels—not vocal ones, literal ones.

Damrau does not come across as a diva, but rather as the lovable, adorable girl-next-door. She is Darling Diana Damrau. I wonder if this causes the world to underappreciate her, just a bit. I wonder whether people realize what they’ve got in her. Just because she’s not a jerk, doesn’t mean she’s not first-rate.

Also, I had this thought, sitting in the seats: “A German soprano and a Mexican tenor are delivering a clinic in bel canto.” This says something about the universality of music, and musical performance. I might add, however, that the two did not look especially comfortable with each other, physically—I mean in the lovey-dovey parts. But this is opera, not theater. Lyric theater, not theater theater.

There is a second soprano in La sonnambula, and that part was taken by Rachelle Durkin, an Australian—who was spunky, capable, and fun. There is a bass, too, and he was Michele Pertusi, an Italian veteran. His singing was somewhat tight. But he had self-possession in spades.

About the production, I will say little. It is Mary Zimmerman’s from 2009. The concept, I believe, is that the people onstage are actually in rehearsal for La sonnambula. Their lives in some way become entwined with the story of the opera. A few years ago, there was a similar production in Salzburg of Die Frau ohne Schatten (Strauss): The people onstage were making a recording, life was imitating art, or art was imitating life, or something . . .

One of the great putdowns employed by today’s critics is “chocolate box”—productions they hate are as pretty as the chocolate boxes of yore (I guess). Say what you will about the Zimmerman Sonnambula, it does not suffer from this problem.

I have no doubt Mary Zimmerman is a smart and skillful director. None. (For one thing, I have seen and admired other productions of hers.) But I often suspect that opera-world people are bored with their work. They have seen everything, over and over. This may not apply to Zimmerman, but it surely applies to others. They want to spice up their lives—and in so doing alter the natures of the operas they are supposed to serve.

There are always newcomers to opera. If a person’s first Sonnambula is the Met’s, has he really seen Sonnambula?

At any rate, Friday night was wonderful. I was not looking forward to it, for several reasons, but it proved wonderful. Much of the credit, frankly, goes to the composer, Bellini. He was good enough for Chopin and Wagner, both of whom esteemed him highly, and he’s more than good enough for us.

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