Customer Reviews

Massenet: Hérodiade

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just can't understand why Herodiade is not as popular as Werther or Manon, the music is more than memorable. As so often happens, after decades of neglect now we have 2 recordings, and both very good. This live from San Francisco recording has 2 big pluses: Renee Fleming and Placido Domingo. Dolora Zajic makes a huge sound and is exciting, but Juan Pons is nowhere near Thomas Hampson on the EMI set. The EMI advantages are some extra music, (notably ballets and the second verse of the tenor aria), and superior sound...and Thomas Hampson and Jose van Dam. I really don't care for Cheryl Studer's brand-free soprano singing. Ben Heppner is sound but he is no Domingo. Both conductors are good, but Michel Plasson is more at home than Gergiev. Since these are the only 2 recordings of Herodiade, get them both.

Massenet's Herodiade has been enjoying a comeback in recent years. The opera is a bit stagey, even for Massenet, in that its his first work which truly exploits his grand obsession with unrequited desire, and how it can be expressed either as secular passion or sublimated as voluptuous eroticism; in this work (unlike in his later "Thaïs," where he finally figured out how to work things out more successfully in terms of dramatics) most of the great love arias are sung to someone who is entirely absent offstage, which makes for a kind of strange opera. But the music is spectacular--as beautiful as anything he ever wrote. His great aria for Salomé, "Il est bon, il est doux," has made a spectacular showcase for the talents of lyric sopranos such as Kiri Te Kanawa; although Renée Fleming was born to play the role of Salomé, and generally acquits herself very well, her rendition of "Il est bon" doesn't quite have the vocal control one would have hoped from her. (Nonetheless, she brings it off.) Placido Domingo and Dolora Zajick are predictably perfect as Jean le Baptiste and Herodiade, even though their characters don't have the best music in the opera; the character who besides Salomé does, Herod, is played adequately but not thrillingly by Juan Pons (he doesn't seem to bring much heat to the role). The recording is live from the San Francisco Opera, and does seem to suffer from this: some of the instrumental performances seem to waver a bit, and the sound of feet running is a big distraction during the Babylonian Dance and other scenes.

I can't understand why Herodiade was not recorded (complete) before. It's such a crowd pleaser! Great arias, great chorus, ballets. This live San Francisco recording is very exciting. Domingo, Fleming and Zajick are electrifying, only Juan Pons is so-so. The EMI recording has the ever suave Thomas Hampson, but Cheryl Studer is nowhere as good as Renee Fleming, and even if Ben Heppner is both noble and sonorous, Domingo has that unmistikable star-quality that makes you stand and listen.

This is a live performance, and like many live performances it is filled with cuts so that it fits comfortably into the evening. Of course, what is often cut in French Opera is the obigatory ballet music. This is no exception. There are cuts to it, and a few other places in the score. I came to this recording completely unfamiliar with the work itself, other than one aria for Salome. I was pleasantly surprised with the work. It really is quite lovely, but I am sure watching it adds a great deal to the work as a whole. I was quite pleased with the singers, and I found they did their parts exceptionally well. My complaint is with the technical aspects of the recording. Now, I am not thinking of the affects one deals with in live recordings, I expect them, and in many cases, I think they add to the listening experience by "taking you there." It is this annoying problem I find with many digital recordings, and many released by SONY; it is the problem of volume. I really hate it when I have to turn up the volume so it shakes the walls to get the "feel" of the music. I find that is one thing that really takes from the "life" in the music; one has to play the recording loudly in order to feel the pulse of the music. This performance is filled with life, and it is very well sung. It is a pity that we have to play the recording fairly loud to appreciate what the artists, conductor, and director are sharing with us. I also find the fullness of the sound is lacking, it is too white, too shallow, too lacking in body. Now I know that it is hard to capture all that perfectly in a live recording, but there are many out there that do. We get everyone's "bright" sound, but we get none of their depth. I think that is one reason Pons sounds so "dry" to many ears. He is actually a wonderful baritone with a very vivid sound, but here it sound sort of "dead." Domingo lacks the "baritone richness" his voice has in spades, and has had all his career (a reason he often transposes tenor arias that require a high C; his voice is very heroic and dark, and those upper notes are really his limit). As for Renee Fleming, well, her voice is reduced in places to a light "piercing" voice, when in reality it is full and luxurious. This is not the performers; it is the recording technique. The worst served in this recording (and she has never been served well in most of her recordings) is Dolora Zajick. Hers is a quite interesting voice. She is a great Verdi Mezzo (and according to Grace Bumbry, a dramatic soprano masquerading as a Mezzo). In performance, her diction is wonderfully clear, but doesn't sound clear in the recording. Her voice is HUGE, and I mean it. She is one of those rare extremely large voices which are so needed but seldom heard these days. Her voice is full throughout, and it is very powerful at the bottom (even if she calls herself more a lyric Mezzo than a dramatic one), her middle is also powerful and warm, and her upper notes are stunning in their strength and LACK of pushed quality. They flow out of her as easily as Sutherland's floated out of her. She also has a high F (for the Queen of the Night) as powerful as Nilsson's high C. Quite often when you hear her singing with other singers, she overpowers them, not only in sound, but in presents. She is not the best actor, but she is very acceptable. I am sure she was doing her usual best in this performance, but the recording simply doesn't capture it at all. Again, if I turned up the volume I was able to capture some of what she brings to a performance, but it seemed more like she was stationed somewhere away from the mikes as if her voice even then was too powerful for them. The performance is excellent, and the opera is a wonderful work and one we should take more seriously. This recording is wonderful in most respects and that is why I rated it so highly. I was not disappointed in it at all, nor in the artists, nor in the interpretation. I just was not impressed with the way the technicians brought it all together.

I think it is only fair to point out that the Sony recording of Herodiade is a cut performance and was also a live performance, so stage noise such as the thumping of the dancer's feet is evident. The cuts may be minor but are more noticeable in the final act where the Prelude, three of the five dances and part of the aria "Adieu donc, vains objets" are missing. One of the charms of Herodiade is the ballet music so to have some chunks of it missing made me select the uncut performance on EMI. The EMI set is a studio recording, but as the reviewer in Gramophone pointed out, this does not make it any less dramatic in presentation than the live version.

The casting in both the Sony and EMI sets is superb: Sony has Domingo, Fleming and Zajick; EMI has Hampson, Studer, Heppner and Van Dam. I cannot agree with the assessment that Cheryl Studer is not as good in the role of Salome as Renee Fleming is; she shines in this role as she did in her recording of Strauss' Salome. Both sets also have problems: Juan Pons has a dry voice in the Sony set and Nadine Denize's voice is unsteady in the EMI set. The EMI set covers three discs but all of the music cannot fit on two, so the third act sits on the second disc and the fourth act is on the third.

Which set one selects depends on whether you want to her all of Herodiade or a cut performance. In any case, this is an opera that demands to be heard.

It was aa exellent idea to record this magnificent performance.This is not a very usual title for the opera theatres.A pitty!!!!