[Met Performance] CID:306300
La Fanciulla del West {79} Metropolitan Opera House: 10/23/1991.
(Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
October 23, 1991
LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST {79}
Minnie..................Barbara Daniels
Dick Johnson............Plácido Domingo
Jack Rance..............Sherrill Milnes
Joe.....................Michael Forest
Handsome................Richard Vernon
Harry...................Bernard Fitch
Happy...................Kevin Short
Sid.....................James Courtney
Sonora..................Bruno Pola
Trin....................Charles Anthony
Jim Larkens.............Kim Josephson
Nick....................Anthony Laciura
Jake Wallace............Terry Cook
Ashby...................Julien Robbins
Post Rider..............Michael Best
Castro..................Vernon Hartman
Billy Jackrabbit........Hao Jiang Tian
Wowkle..................Sondra Kelly
Conductor...............Leonard Slatkin
Production..............Giancarlo Del Monaco
Designer................Michael Scott
Lighting designer.......Gil Wechsler
Review of Martin Mayer in Opera (UK)
The Metropolitan Opera gave us two new productions this autumn - "Fanciulla" and "L'elisir d'amore" The Puccini is from a fallow period in the composer's melodic invention, and it is not helped by the borrowing of its best tune for "Phantom of the Opera," but it is very skillfully put together. Given its growing reputation, and the fact that it is after all our piece - Belasco, the Western setting, the fact that it was written for New York - the house needed a new "Girl of the Golden West." The production has its problems - the bar is a little big, and it's nutty to bring Johnson down from the attic to lie unconscious beside the table where Minnie and Jack are playing poker, and there's no excuse at all for creating a grey abandoned mining town as the final scene of an opera that does, after all, end happily. Still, we've had lots worse. The genre bits for chorus and comprimarios in the first act are especially well done.
Barbara Daniels was our Minnie. On the [premiere] night she apparently had major vocal problems, but on October 23 she was fine once she got past her [first] aria - and she's a lovely artist with the right personality for this role. Placido Domingo has become the master of masters - always Domingo, but somehow able to blend it with the character he is playing. Sherrill Milnes was a splendid Rance: he has come to terms with his voice as it is and uses it to full effect; and he has become something of an operatic actor. Terry Cook was an impressive minstrel. Leonard Slatkin, a thoroughly first-class conductor, made his Met debut with an individual interpretation involving more syncopation than is common with Puccini. Giancarlo Del Monaco directed traditionally, with a nice shock moment when one of the dancers gets thrown through the railing of the loggia above the bar. Gil Wechsler's lighting was a disaster, even worse than usual.