Is this the end for fading Domingo?
Plácido Domingo’s voice is running close to empty, leaving only a flicker of the 75-year-old’s former power as a tenor, says Rupert Christiansen in his review of Verdi’s Nabucco at Covent Garden.
Nabucco
Royal Opera, Covent Garden
Will this prove to be the end of Plácido Domingo’s glorious 45-year career at Covent Garden? He isn’t scheduled to appear next season, and, at the ripe age of 75, it’s hard to imagine how much longer he can disguise the degeneration of his tenorial register by singing baritone roles. As this uncomfortable performance in the title-role of Verdi’s
Nabucco confirms, his voice is now running pretty close to empty.
Of course, he remains a great artist with enormous experience and skill, so there were moments when one poignantly recognised a flicker of his old nobility – in Nabucco’s duet with Abigaille and the quiet aria of repentance “Dio di Giuda”, for example. But any penetrative power has faded, the gleam has long since tarnished, and his vibrato widens excessively when any pressure is applied. His evident reliance on the prompt box (including one hideous lapse of memory) is less than professional.
Given my indelible memories of Otello, Samson and Hoffmann in his prime, I found all this excruciatingly sad. There is so much good that Domingo could still be doing, but vainly singing major roles in major opera houses is not one of them.
The revival of Daniele Abbado’s production is otherwise passable, sustained if not elevated by the doggedly unflappable conductor Maurizio Benini and some decent playing from the orchestra. John Relyea doesn’t radiate the High Priest Zaccaria’s awesome moral gravitas, but he sang his music mellifluously. Liudmyla Monastyrska applied a laser-sharp blast to Abigaille’s first aria and crooned her death scene: the extremes were impressive, but there didn’t seem much else in between, and she doesn’t relish Italian consonants. I wish the score had provided more opportunities for the young lovers Ismael and Fenena – what little Jean-François Borras and Jamie Barton did as Ismaele and Fenena was very fine. The augmented chorus sounded magnificent, and “Va, pensiero” truly wafted “sull’ali dorate”, on gilded wings. Abbado’s staging, first seen in 2013, is trapped by its attempt to draw parallels between the Babylonian captivity of the Old Testament and the Nazi persecutions of the mid-20th century. Unfortunately, these two histories are too disparate to be brought into an illuminating comparison, and what is left is simply an austerely grey spectacle with nothing much to say to or about anybody. Had I been paying £185 for my seat in the stalls, I doubt I would have gone home happy.
Until June 30. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk