The reasons for the emotion hardly matter. This is an opera about anger, which makes it perpetually timely and doubly so now, when rage hardens all political positions and undergirds all public conversations. (Or at least they were on opening night.)įinally, the spurned sorceress makes her entrance, shedding notes like flaming cinders. Beethoven admired Cherubini’s music, presumably for its narrative drive and the vividness of his orchestration, but Rizzi seems to have had trouble getting the Met orchestra to buy into that assessment - the first 45 minutes are short on sharpness, savagery, or foreboding. It takes a long time for Medea to show up to her own opera, and in the meantime, the work chugs along in a protracted bout of exposition, propelled by a score of dark dramatic charms. But even these high beams go wan in Radvanovsky’s sunlight.
Matthew Polenzani supplies splendid indignation as Medea’s disenchanted ex, Giasone (he of the Golden Fleece), Ekaterina Gubanova does fine work as Neris, and Michele Pertusi thunders admirably as the king, Creonte. But if the company finally got around to mounting a 1797 opera for the first time, it’s as a showcase for the soprano, who sells it virtually singlehandedly with tempered voice and controlled ferocity. Technically, that’s not an accurate description, since Luigi Cherubini composed the score, David McVicar directed, and the performance, conducted by Carlo Rizzi, took place at the Met. Sondra Radvanovsky opened the season by singing the title role in Sondra Radvanovsky’s production of Sondra Radvanovsky’s Medea in the Sondra Radvanovsky Opera House.
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