Critic's Notebook: It's time to cut Slatkin some slack

Seven years ago, Plácido Domingo took over the last couple of performances of a new Los Angeles Opera production of “The Damnation of Faust” from then-music director Kent Nagano. Domingo had sung the title role of Berlioz’s opera/oratorio, but he had never conducted it. So he figured this would be a good opportunity to familiarize himself with a very tricky score as well as with the work of the stage director, Achim Freyer. No one expected Domingo to match Nagano’s refinement or sensitivity to the French style, but Domingo had the good will of the cast and orchestra, who naturally wanted their boss to look good. He did.

Leonard Slatkin reportedly did not look so good last week when he conducted his first (and thus far only) performance of Verdi’s “La Traviata” at the Metropolitan Opera. The accusation heard far and wide is that Slatkin did not know the score. He clearly didn’t. I’m not talking about Verdi’s score.

Slatkin blogged about the rehearsal process and that is where the trouble began. Candidly, the conductor mentioned that he thought working with a company that had performed this opera hundreds of times and with a seasoned cast that included soprano Angela Gheorghiu as the consumptive courtesan Violetta, he might pick up a pointer or two on the “Traviata” tradition, just as Domingo had wanted to reap the benefit of L.A. Opera’s Berlioz experience. Slatkin also hoped he might bring a fresh perspective to the table.

Many commentators have said that Slatkin’s mistake was accepting this engagement. He was originally hired to conduct John Corigliano’s 1991 opera, “The Ghosts of Versailles,” which was replaced by “Traviata” in a cost-cutting measure. No one at the Met is, of course, talking. But when the opera police finally send a detective to lock down the house until someone breaks, the first question to ask would be whether Slatkin’s arm was twisted by management. Was he under contract and thus pressured to continue, lest the Met have to pay him off?

The old, overstuffed Franco Zeffirelli production was trotted out for the last time and the Met went into opera factory mode, which meant very few rehearsals. The backstage gossip is that Slatkin arrived unprepared. But unprepared for what?

There may be plenty of room for interpretive subtlety, but technically “Traviata,” with its pages of oom-pah-pah accompaniments, is not terribly difficult to conduct. Certainly Slatkin, who has been a professional conductor for four decades, knew how the music went. And after a couple of weeks of rehearsals, he was hardly conducting unfamiliar music opening night.

This is a conductor who, after all, I once heard pull off a concert performance in London of John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer,” an opera of tremendous rhythmic difficulty, with minimal rehearsal. Slatkin does not have a reputation for always being a detail man at rehearsals, but it is inconceivable that “Traviata” got away from him.

What did get away from him was his soprano. In the midst of rehearsals, the Met asked Gheorghiu to substitute for an ailing Anna Netrebko in “La Bohème,” and so Gheorghiu pulled out of the first critical “Traviata” run-through with orchestra. 

Monday, the Italian conductor, Marco Armiliato, who took over from Slatkin (he withdrew from the “Traviata” for “personal reasons”), told Bloomberg.com that Gheorghiu is “a diva and she prefers the conductor to follow her lead. She knows exactly what she wants, and 99 percent of the time she’s right.”

There is, of course, no such thing in music as being 99% right. This is hardly a singer who wanted to re-examine a role, let alone experiment with a conductor with a fresh perspective.

I have no doubt that Slatkin’s “Traviata” performance went as badly as my colleagues reported (illness forced baritone Thomas Hampson to miss rehearsals and Slatkin had minimal time with the orchestra and chorus). But the fact is the company could make him look good or bad. The rumors that Gheorghiu wanted Slatkin replaced by a slavish maestro who let her eat the scenery is not hard to believe, nor that the Met would scapegoat a conductor for the sake of a star who sells far more seats than does Slatkin.

Still, it doesn’t have to be that way. Esa-Pekka Salonen once told me that when he conducted Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” for the first time in the opera house, he had a discussion with his soprano, Waltraud Meier, a noted Isolde. She told him that in certain passages, she did this, this and this. Everything else was negotiable. Hers, that night in Paris five years ago, was the finest Isolde I had ever encountered on stage.

Slatkin never had that, or any, discussion with Gheorghiu. But then I don’t imagine that the no-nonsense Meier came to Salonen’s dressing room after the performance and cooed a lullaby to him, as the accommodating Armiliato proudly told Bloomberg his Violetta did Saturday night.

-- Mark Swed

Photo: Leonard Slatkin conducting at the Hollywood Bowl last summer. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Bob Thomas]

Mark: I'm sorry but I think you're dead wrong about the treatment of Leonard Slatkin and the Met's "La Traviata." I have yet to read a comment from anyone who said that the performance was something other than what was reported. For the people who paid full prices for tickets, that's unacceptable. There may be a lot of blame to share about what ultimately transpired but either Mr. Slatkin should have been better prepared to fulfill his responsibilities as a conductor or withdrawn BEFORE the first performance, not after.

[Wolfy]

Since when is Mark Swed an opera expert? Stick to the instrumentals, Mark!

[Michael]

Repertory opera companies in Berlin, Vienna, Munich and the Met have all had their share of performance disasters due to the nature of the system. I don't know how much experience Mr. Slatkin has had in dealing with the issues discussed in this article, but he is mostly known as an orchestra conductor vs. Mr. Armiliato who is known as an opera conductor. Working with big league opera stars in the jet-set world of opera requires special finesse and experience.

I recall an important revival of Fancuilla del West with Placido Domingo and Mara Zampieri at my old house, Deutsche Oper Berlin,. The scheduled young orchestral conductor (who shall not be named) had about 5 or 6 orchestra rehearsals before the run was to begin. He made a disaster of all them and withdrew. Luckily, Placido knew who to call and we had Anton Guadagno fly in and take command of the run with only one orchestra rehearsal!

[Anonymous]

Dear Mark,

I have been following this story with great interest. Indeed, there are many elements to the story that we do not know. As you say, the Metropolitan Opera could have chosen to make Mr. Slatkin look good or look bad; in this case, however, Mr. Tommasini is really the one who made the case in his scathing review following opening night. For Mr. Slatkin, I can only imagine what working with Ms. Gheroghiu might have been like during these several weeks. Mr. Slatkin's biggest mistake was in failing to grasp that in the world of opera, drama and ego even bigger than his own are at play.

I also agree with Mark; if it were Placido -- whose incredible vocal skills have nothing in common with his conducting shortcomings -- the review would have been more tempered and Ms. Gheorghiu and the rest of the cast would never allowed their disrespect to sweep away that production as it happened.

[Carol Brooks]

He we go again, Mark Swed having another go at Angela Gheorghiu. How tired this gets. If it were Renee Fleming not a word would have been said, or he would have slated Slatkin and propped her up with a dutiful and doting defence.

[Michael Ebert]

Mr Swed,

Read Tommasini's article about proper Verdi conducting, giving room for singers to shape lyrical phrases, knowing how to follow them. According to Mr Tommasini, Slatkin had no clue how to do that. Instead, he raced along, leaving ALL the principals high and dry. In this disastrous mess, blaming Gheorghiu is a cheap, ignorant shot on your part. Read Tommasini, who was there while you were not, and who seems to know more about Verdi conducting than you do.

[DanCello]

Why are you trashing Marco Armiliato? As if symphonic conductors are somehow more pure than Opera conductors. Armiliato has learned a craft that Slatkin has not, which is how to conduct opera.

People's expectations for Domingo as a conductor are low, and he has met them. If Slatkin wants to conduct main-stream opera fare, he should have learned Traviata at a master's side, somewhere out of the limelight, as Armiliato and the many other gifted opera conductors have.

The fact that many of the world's greatest conductors learned how to conduct in the pit for ballet and opera is a testament to their ability to react immediately to events and make the music live. I've been to a lot of boring orchestral performances where the music sounded like rehearsal, and the conductor couldn't budge the orchestra an inch. Typically, it's a conductor who has never conducted in the pit, and if it's too fast to be intelligible, probably a former pianist.