The keen-eared critic David Shengold attended The Tempest at the Met last night. Not able to make the performance myself, I asked him for a brief report on the mood in the house, and he generously complied. His full review will appear in another publication at a later date.
The
Met's third performance of Thomas Adès's 2004 Tempest took place in extraordinary conditions: the city had been
virtually closed for two days for the most destructive local storm since 1938,
with the most flooding since 1821 at Battery Park (site of Swedish cult diva
Jenny Lind's bayside U.S. debut,
the Beatles-playing-Ed Sullivan cultural event of 1850). Millions
hereabouts remained in darkness; the crucial subway system remained inactive.
The Met's Figaro, with its ghastly
female leading trio, was mercifully skipped Monday; less happily, on Hurricane
Sandy Day Zero Tuesday, the second-cast Turandot, with Irène Theorin's first local Ice Princess and Janai Brugger's
much-awaited Met debut as Liù, got scotched, along with the in-house orchestral
rehearsal for Harry Bicket's impressively cast Clemenza di Tito.
But, amazingly, last night, composer/conductor Adès (who in a random pre-show
encounter confessed himself haunted by the televised image of the sinking
H.M.S. Bounty), the orchestral musicians, the entire cast (not one of the eleven
listed singers was missing), a sufficient crew, and a decent-sized, by Met terms
youth-skewed audience for—hey, look, Ma, a workable and striking
Robert Lepage production!—got themselves there to enact or witness a narrative
that begins with a sinking ship, high winds, and apparent loss of life, and ends
with the hope of lives mended within reason, and—for the island's dazed
longtime inhabitants, as well as the frightened visitors from
far away—restored tranquility.
— David Shengold