The Korean Wave 2006 - Korean Cultural Service

The New York Times, thursday, august 24, 2006
e5
Moonlit Verdi,
Loud Enough for
Blankets in Back Row
By STEVE SMITH
Before the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of
Verdi’s “Traviata” on the Great Lawn of Central
Park on Tuesday night, Peter Gelb, the company’s
new general manager, welcomed the audience to the
40th season of free summer performances. He seized the
opportunity to promote several new initiatives: a free
dress rehearsal of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” on Sept.
22, television broadcasts and Internet downloads, and a
family-friendly condensation of Mozart’s “Magic Flute”
during the Met’s winter break.
This is the new face of populism, Metropolitan Opera
style, but the evening’s performance followed the model
the company has favored for four decades: vocalists in
evening wear planted in front of an orchestra, with everyone
highly amplified. It’s an unnatural mode for presenting
– and listening to – opera, but it attracts large
throngs. The police estimate, Met officials reported, was
an unusually specific 30,760.
That’s not to suggest the evening held no attraction for
Met cognoscenti. The performance was the company debut
of Wookyung Kim, a promising young South Korean
tenor who won first prize in Placido Domingo’s Operalia
competition in 2004, as Alfredo. His Violetta was the
soprano Hei-Kyung Hong, a Met regular who is, incidentally,
also South Korean. The baritone Charles Taylor,
impressive in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” last
season, sang Germont.
These artists will reprise their roles on the Met stage in
January, making this presentation something of a sneak
preview. On the whole it was a satisfying peek. Ms. Hong
handled her part with characteristic grace, despite some
technical difficulties late in the first act, which were cruelly
amplified. She was strongest in the most emotionally
fraught arias, during the second and third acts.
Mr. Kim’s voice was ardent and penetrating, Mr. Taylor’s
suitably gruff and authoritative. Characterization of the
complex relationships between these principals was relatively
slight, but there was ample reason to expect more
from the forthcoming indoor performances; eminently
Old-school opera in the park,
with new ideas on the horizon.
clear was how good these singers sounded together. The
conductor Derrick Inouye provided accompaniment that
was stylish and sturdy, save for a few breathlessly wobbly
passages in the final act.
Near the stage the sound was slightly strident, but some
200 yards away, on a dusty baseball diamond, voices
seemed richer, the orchestra better blended. Of course
from so far away the stage might have been an iPod
screen. Perhaps Mr. Gelb could add a few Jumbotrons to
his already bulging shopping list of inclusive devices.
“La Traviata” will be performed tomorrow night in Marine Park,
Brooklyn; next Tuesday in Richmond County Bank Ball Park,
Staten Island; and next Friday in Brookdale Park, Bloomfied, N.J.
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Copyright © 2006 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.