NEW YORK (AP) — Tenor Rolando Villazón was singing the title function in Massenet’s “Werther” in 2006 at Good, France, when he began fascinated about how he would direct the opera.
“I said, ‘oh, this last act is very difficult. He shot himself and keeps singing for 40 minutes.’ And so, what would I do?” he recalled. “And I started inventing, creating for fun a staging.”
Practically twenty years later, Villazón is making his Metropolitan Opera directing debut in Bellini’s “La Sonnambula,” which opened Monday evening with a standout forged of Nadine Sierra, Xabier Anduaga and Alexander Vinogradov.
“He is very sensitive to singers,” Sierra mentioned. “Maybe some directors, because they’re not singers or they were never singers, it’s hard for them to really relate to the psychological struggle that some singers, we deal with on stage. We want to make our characters as believable as humanly possible through the actions that we show, but sometimes it’s hard to do that because you also have to sing high notes.”
Profession as tenor took off 26 years in the past
Villazón grew up in Mexico Metropolis, gained Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competitors in 1999 and made his European debut that yr in Massenet’s “Manon” at Genoa, Italy. He debuted on the Met in Verdi’s “La Traviata” in 2003 and gained extensive renown when he sang Alfredo with Anna Netrebko’s Violetta in Willy Decker’s austere staging on the 2005 Salzburg Competition.
Vocal issues developed in 2007, inflicting Villazón to cancel his schedule, and he had surgical procedure in 2009 to take away a cyst from his vocal cords. He developed efficiency anxiousness round 2015 and had one other operation in 2018 to alleviate acid reflux disease.
“Two things coincided when I stopped singing for a year in 2009 — and that was I wrote my first novel and I prepared my staging, but both didn’t happen because I was resting,” he mentioned. “Would I have finished my novel? I don’t know. But stage direction for sure that would have happened.”
Lengthy highway from idea to stage
When Villazón conceived his “Werther” staging, he shared it with Alain Lanceron, then head of the tenor’s file label, Virgin Classics. Richard Jones, a director Villazón had labored with, helped him discover a theater. After being turned down in Berlin, Villazón gained over Serge Dorny, then basic director in Lyon and now head of the Paris Opéra.
Villazón’s “Werther” debuted in 2011, and he directed Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” the next yr at Baden-Baden, Germany, whereas additionally singing Nemorino.
He has gone on to direct Verdi’s “La Traviata,” Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale,” Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus,” Rameau’s “Platée,” Bellini’s “I Puritani” and Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” and has upcoming productions of Mozart’s “ Die Zauberflöte” and Rossini’s “L’Italiana in Algeri.”
His “Sonnambula” unfolds in an icy Alp village inside a single set in entrance of projections and was first seen at Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2021, then at Good in 2022 and Dresden, Germany, in 2023. It was to have traveled to the Met in 2023-24 however was postponed due to finances cuts.
“In the staging rehearsals, he was always on the stage with them,” Met basic supervisor Peter Gelb mentioned. “Usually, directors are in the room with the singers, but they spend a lot of the time watching from a distant seat. He was more in the trenches with the singers than most directors are.”
`Sonnambula’ staging has uncommon twist
Villazón rejects the glad ending of Donizetti and librettist Felice Romani. Quite than Amina awakening from sleepwalking in ecstasy when she learns Elvino will marry her, she provides him again his ring and runs off to an impartial future. He tweaked the path for New York, slicing the dancing spirits Amina hallucinates from three to at least one and including a globe, a telescope and a newspaper as items from Rely Rodolfo to point out the worldly curiosity she seeks.
“It remains in essence the concept I had thought for it, the concept of a closed society, patriarchal, for sure very religious, where there is a strange woman adopted by a widow,” Villazón mentioned. “She is obliged to follow the rules and to adapt to the way the community behaves for the good of the community, but she still feels this call of the wild.”
Sierra and Anduaga had sung these roles in a Barbara Llutch staging that opened in Madrid in December 2022 and traveled to Barcelona final April earlier than coming to New York to work with Villazón,
“He really understands our situation,” Anduaga mentioned. “He doesn’t want to to do anything weird or strange with the body because he knows that all the movements are important, but the singing is the most important thing.”
Villazón discovered from his expertise with a string of prime administrators, together with Decker, Jones, Robert Carsen, Claus Guth, Christof Loy and Bart Sher.
“Richard Jones told me: `You ask something three times,’” Villazón recalled. ”`If the performer doesn’t do it, both she or he is unable to do it or incapable to do it. In both case, you’ll not get what you’re asking, so transfer on and consider one thing else.’”
