The Enchanted Island, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Jan. 21 2012

An interesting project, this. Take Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, about the Duke of Milan (Prospero), exiled to an island along with his daughter, Miranda. Mix in the two couples from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who get shipwrecked on Prospero’s island and are subsequently paired up with the wrong lover through the misapplication of a magic potion. Create a major role for Sycorax, Caliban’s mother, who in The Tempest dies before the play opens. Find arias and dances from a number of Baroque operas by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Leclair, Purcell, Campra, and Jean-Féry Rebel. Set the words of the libretto to that music. What do you get? A pasticcio (pastiche), a form that is described as “almost as old as opera itself.” My favorite example of the genre is something called The Savoyards, which the Lamplighters presented many years ago, telling the story of the collaboration of Gilbert and Sullivan using the music and often the words of Gilbert and Sullivan: “See how the fates their gifts allot—G is happy but S is not.”

So The Enchanted Island works out to be the “world premiere” of three hours of Baroque music, complete with new sets and costumes of course. The set was an amalgam of the Baroque practice of painted flats and the thoroughly modern techniques of interactive, computer-generated video projections. The basic structure of the set was that of two columns connected by an arch overhead. Each column had a short (eight steps) curving staircase leading up to a door. The left column was Prospero’s: above the door were shelves full of books. The right column was Sycorax’s: it was engulfed by tree roots. The open space between the columns was used for any number of projections and drop-down flats. The budget for costumes must have been immense: an elaborate golden feathers (and angel-like wings) for Ariel, creature-from-the-black-lagoon costumes for Caliban and Sycorax, elaborate costumes with head-masks for the dancers, etc.

Our cast:
Ariel: Danielle de Niese
Miranda: Lisette Oropesa
Sycorax: Joyce DiDonato
Prospero: David Daniels
Ferdinand: Anthony Roth Costanzo
Neptune: Plácido Domingo
Caliban: Luca Pisaroni
Conductor: William Christie
Production: Phelim McDermott

Of these, the most impressive were Danielle de Niese and Luca Pisaroni. de Niese tossed off elaborate baroque showpiece arias with ease, and acted the part of the sprite to perfection. Pisaroni displayed a wondrous bass-baritone voice. Plácido Domingo was singing on this, his 71st birthday. While he may not be quite as impressive as he once was, it was still a delight to hear him. At the interview our hostess Deborah Voigt mentioned that Neptune was his 136th role, and Domingo noted that this was the first time he had portrayed a god. But ... how many times does a tenor get to portray even a king?

The major shortcoming of this performance was the libretto. On the macro scale, the idea of doing a mash-up of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a reasonable one. On the micro level, that of the actual words to be sung, there were problems. While there was nothing as silly as “Please pass the salt” or “Who was that on the telephone?” or “I will have to give you a geography lesson,” the librettist was clearly no Shakespeare. And the libretto was littered with far too many rhymed couplets that were just lame. Worth seeing once but not twice. A beta.