Fedora: Not Quite a Hat Trick

It’s the small details that shine—and sometimes confound—in David McVicar’s latest production for the Metropolitan Opera. My Saturday matinee performance delivered the sumptuous luxury that I’ve come to expect from McVicar’s scenery and direction (his third new production over the last two seasons), with a few forgivable missteps.

The work begins with a mysterious attack and its subsequent murder investigation. But delay your imaginings of a Law and Order procedural: this is 1880s St. Petersburg! Portraits watch over the entry way and a well-placed light reveals the betrothed and dying Count Vladimiro Andrejevich’s chambers behind a scrim. Musically and dramatically, the first act is weak. Most of the blame goes to the sheer amount of exposition the story requires rather than conductor Marco Armiliato or the Met Orchestra’s dutiful performance.

Our dearly departed has been traveling by sleigh, and Carillo is summoned for a statement; the sleigh driver enters stage right, his furs dusted with snow. (He is played by Jeongcheol Cha, whose aria—introduced by a sly, reedy bassoon—was Act I’s musical highlight.) A lesser production might have forgotten that precipitate detail as characters come in from the storm; a greater one might have required characters to leave from the same door on stage right, instead of a new, heretofore and dramatically unused door on stage left. This reviewer couldn’t help but grin, however, as the newfound exit allowed a gust of snowfall into the salon’s interior.

Things get messy in Act II. We finally meet our leading tenor, Piotr Beczała as Count Loris Ipanoff, the breathing assassin of our Count deceased. In a coup-de-theatre, several arias are accompanied onstage by the cousin and musical heir of Liszt (Bryan Wagorn in top form as both pianist and actor). Meanwhile we’ve crossed borders into France and, though nothing feels distinctly French, rich gold leaf abounds, we see a round couch for mid-party tête-à-tête, and there are enough globed [gas] lamps to explode your midcentury modern bubble. Some design choices just keep coming back.

Because his portrait wasn’t removed during the scene change, the Count continues to monitor the proceedings from beyond. Act II also contains an orchestral interlude in which Vlad and Fedora share a tender trans-dimensional kiss. Instead of exiting as the dreamlike interlude ends, our Count (still dead!) remains onstage, increasingly distressed, as Fedora captures Ipanoff’s admission of guilt, ready with officers to arrest him. Though the dream dance was lovely, Vladimir’s stage business is distracting, nor does it prevent Fedora from forgiving Loris and aiding his safe passage away from the would-be captors.

We now cross over the Swiss border for Act III, Fedora and Loris enjoy a brilliantly lit Alpine summit view without the risk of extradition. Our intrepid travelers are surrounded by the trappings of class and leisure: crisp white clothes, a parasol, two bicycles, and….a pitchfork? Presumably this helps place our scene—in case a yodeling accordion boy onstage and Mahlerian horn calls from the pit weren’t enough. There’s no way that our Lovers want Vlad’s ghost hanging around, yet he appears again in both portrait mode and geistlich form! Such is the trouble with metaphor realized.

Though his first notes in Act II were a bit clenched, and her high-tessitura vibrato wobbled throughout the performance, both Beczała and Yoncheva were at their best in the opera’s final scene. Fast forwarding through the plot, our couple agrees they both were wrong to some degree, but not before—spoiler alert!—our heroine begins to fade away from self-administered poison. The mountain face’s brilliant lighting gradually dims as her body sinks. The brass delivers a mighty, quick coda. We yell brava.