Anthony
Performers: Julia Bullock, Gerald Finley, etc. O. and C. Liceu. Dir. Choir: Pablo Assante. Musical direction: John Adams. Stage direction: Elkhanah Pulitzer. Place and date: Liceu (X/28/23). Coprod. from San Francisco Opera, Liceu and MET
Great artistic milestone of the Liceu with the European premiere of Antony
This premiere will go down in musical historiography due to the importance of its protagonists: the first time that Adams himself conducted his opera (it was not him at the world premiere in San Francisco); first time that soprano Julia Bullock, for whom Adams specifically wrote the complex role of Cleopatra, took on the role (she was pregnant at the world premiere), and Adams' third opera premiered in Spain: Dr. Atomic (2005) was seen in Seville, in 2015, and last May the national premiere of Nixon in China (1987) was enjoyed at the Real.
Two premieres of John Adams in the same opera year in Spain. The coincidence highlights the importance of the figure of its composer. A creator who has written six operas, being Antony
An opera that does not hide in its morbid musical interludes its nods to Wagner or Britten and that begins with colors in the woodwinds in the purest Richard Strauss style of Salome.
The orchestral writing is rich, complex and develops an attractive post-minimal tonal melodic game, the problem lies in its vocal writing. The insistent continuous melodic singing becomes monotonous and lacks the freshness, color and inspired moments that he did have in his memorable Nixon in China. With the luxury of having the composer himself on the podium, the Liceu orchestra sounded disciplined for a score that draws on minimalism but goes much further.
The production combined a Hollywood art-deco style in contrast with a message about political totalitarianism that worked thanks to a fluid, cinematic set design with an air of a Broadway musical in its danced numbers.
The apparent fluidity and tonal language of the work should not deceive; the filigree of the orchestration and a complex vocal plot complete a difficult opera for its interpreters.
Antony stood out, in the recreation of an incisive and brutal Gerald Finley. If his Marco Antonio is a mature lover, his contradictions, his thirst for power and his few scruples make him a multifocal character that Finley embroiders with consummate vocal charisma. He disappointed Bullock's Cleopatra. Although the sinuosity of his incarnation had no buts, on a vocal level he was overcome by the drama of the score, with a harsh tessitura in the acute third that tarnished his generous interpretation.
Amplitude of vocal colors in the rest of the cast with the striking and difficult role of Caesar by a theatrical Paul Appleby, with a pointed timbre in contrast to the mellowness of the phrasing and the color of the bass-baritone Alfred Walker, highlighted by Enobarbus. The tenor Brenton Ryan (Eros) and the baritones Äneas Humm (Agrippa), Milan Perišić (Scarus), Toni Marsol (Maecenas) and Guillem Batllori (Lepidus) are impeccable. The dark voices of Elisabeth DeShong (Octavia), Adriana Bignani Lesca (Charmian) and Marta Infante (Iras), completed the elaborate vocal coloring of a score that has placed the Liceu as the world capital of contemporary opera.
