Rene Fleming and Six Tenors in Rossini's "Armida" on Met Saturday Matinee Broadcast

St. Louis Public Radio will carry the Met Opera broadcast of Gioachino Rossini's Armida on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 12 noon. Approximate running time 3 hours, 30 minutes, with intermissions at approximately 1:10 pm and 2:20 p.m.

The Met says, "Renée Fleming revisits Rossini’s powerful but conflicted sorceress in the Met’s new production directed by Tony Award® winner Mary Zimmerman. Lawrence Brownlee is Rinaldo, the object of Armida’s love and revenge."

In a less-than-rapturous review in the February 20, 2011, New York Times, Zachary Woolfe writes:

With a voice of reduced agility, size and power, Ms. Fleming now paces herself cautiously, simplifying or dodging many of the coloratura fireworks. In the first and second acts she limits her singing in full voice, clearly saving herself for Act III, in which Rossini ingeniously relaxes the ornamentation as Armida’s powers disappear, and she is left a mere woman. Here, the line lyrical and the range congenial, Ms. Fleming is finally persuasive.

But caution isn’t what you want in an Armida, and singing the opera like a one-act misses Act I’s glittering runs and the great Act II aria “D’amore al dolce impero,” moments that establish the commanding and loving sides of this complex character. Ms. Fleming acts naturally, but in this repertory acting and singing are even more unified than elsewhere in opera. Since she doesn’t seduce or dazzle — do what Rossini has built into the music — her later humiliation and rage lose their impact, and the character loses its depth.

Mary Zimmerman’s wanly Neo-Classical production doesn’t help locate the depths of an opera about intense emotions and the possibilities and limits of illusion. Instead of passion or fantasy, Ms. Zimmerman tries cuteness: animatronic insects, demons in tutus, a winsome girl personifying love.

While adorable may suffice for the frolics in Armida’s enchanted garden, when the opera takes on more heart-wrenching dimensions, the production is stumped. Ms. Zimmerman seems more interested in winking at operatic style —- with antiqued footlights, Italianized placards reading “Ballo” and “Fine,” the conceit that Armida is reading her aria from sheet music -— than in believing in its complexities.

Riccardo Frizza conducted sluggishly, and while the opera features no fewer than six tenors, only Lawrence Brownlee, as Armida’s lover, Rinaldo, sang with freedom and fervor. His Act III solo was the highlight of the evening, a reminder of the infectious excitement Rossini makes possible, if only you do what he tells you.

Photo above from Parerre Boxm, who say:

“Renee Fleming and Timothy Jessell arrive for the formal artist’s dinner for the Kennedy Center Honors at the United States Department of State December 4, 2010 in Washington, D.C.”