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The epitome of the sacred monster at
the moment is surely the Argentine tenor José Cura, 38. So far, New
Yorkers have seen him just three times, in a single production, as
the Sicilian lothario Turiddu in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana,
amid the wreckage of the once picturesque staging by Franco
Zeffirelli, woefully led by Carlo Rizzi and partnered by the
uncongenial Santuzza of Dolora Zajick. Thanks to Placido Domingo
in his capacity as artistic director of the Washington Opera,
audiences in the capital have taken Mr. Cura’s measure in two of his
signature roles: Saint-Saens’s Samson and Verdi’s Otello.
In the biblical
spectacular, he bore the destiny of the despondent Chosen People on
heroic shoulders, his prophetic song ringing forth with dark, blazing
grandeur. His authority was total. But his last Washington
Otello
this spring was an altogether more daring affair. Of the British stage
idol Edmund Kean, Samuel Coleridge wrote, “To see him act is like
reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning,” and so it was with Mr.
Cura in Verdi’s Shakespearean mode.
Praise
or censure? That depends on your point of view. Between lightning
flashes fell long spells of pitch dark. On prior occasions in Europe,
Mr. Cura had executed the notes with a scrupulousness that had only
boosted his tremendous conception of the part. This time, rather than
sing the music, he chose to channel the character. Call it extreme
music drama, and sway, if you can, whether it unfolded through or in
spite of the music. Over the radio or on a recording, it might have
sounded grotesque, but it was hair-raising to be there.
Among those who witnessed
Mr. Cura’s Washington Otello is Barbara cook, the Broadway star of
mid-century who created the roles of Marian the Librarian in “The Music
Man” and Cunegonde in “Candide,” and continues to wrap audiences around
her finger in cabaret and concert performances. (One prominent London
critic has repeatedly placed her artistry on a par with that of Callas.)
Unlike critics, whose
professional obligation to endure upward of a hundred evenings of opera
a year many has patently come to regret, Ms. Cook has the luxury of
attending purely as the spirit moves her. For the last year or so,
between engagements of her own, she has traveled as far a field as
Madrid, Paris and London to keep up with Mr. Cura’s performances.
Why such devotion? “It’s
the total package,” Ms. Cook said recently. “In any era, only a very
few people are at the pinnacle. I can’t think of anybody who sings as
well, who acts as well, who moves as well. It’s like watching a great
baseball player who has this terrific masculine grace. Whatever things
might be wrong with José’s performances, he has a concentration that
pulls you right into his world.”
This weekend, viewers in
more than a hundred countries will be tuning in for their Cura fix in a
live telecast of “La Traviata,” spread our over installments on Saturday
and Sunday, and shot in what are billed as authentic Paris locations.
(Cinema verite meets Masterpiece Theater.) The prima donna is the
hitherto unknown Eteri Gvazava, of Siberia, cast, Mr. Cura says, after
the sort of talent search that produced Hollywood’s Scarlett O’Hara.
By rights, Verdi’s tragedy
of the fallen woman redeemed by suffering is the soprano’s opera, but
this time it may be the tenor’s. Not that Alfredo Germont, the romantic
but callow bourgeois papa’s boy who woos Violetta from her life of
soulless pleasure, is the sort of character one associates with Mr.
Cura’s brooding macho presence.
Mr. Cura has admitted as
much, adding: “Alfredo has gotten the greatest courtesan in Paris to
give up everything for him. There must be a reason.” Americans may
decide for themselves in the fall, when the show is expected to appear
on PBS; a Teldec CD of the soundtrack, conducted by Zubin Mehta, goes
on sale here in July.
To
a degree seldom if ever matched in the annals of opera, Mr. Cura – also
a composer and conductor – marches to his own drum. On “Verismo,” his
latest CD for Erato, he dedicates a whole program to a style of the late
19th and early 20th centuries commonly thought
vulgar and sensationalistic. Acting as his own conductor, he sets out
to redefine it as a school of chaste refinement.
In the hit-and-run
showstopper, ‘Amor ti vieta,” from Giordano’s dismal “Fedora,” the
delicacy of the phrasing (lines taken in a single breath alternating
with lines of similar length taken in two) is as unusual as it is
natural and discreet. There are discoveries like this to be made
throughout. And nowhere will you find Mr. Cura clinging, in
self-indulgent spaghetti-tenor fashion, to top notes the composer
actually wrote or did not.
On his very best vocal
behavior, Mr. Cura here gives the lie to those who have said that he has
no technique. What we hear, by contrast, in such daredevil performances
as the Washington “Otello” is a self-conscious, highly idiosyncratic
technique fraught with peril. How well it will Mr. Cura in the long run
remains to be seen. Self-immolation is not actually required of sacred
monsters, but longevity is not always their strong suit.
Whatever lies ahead, Mr. Cura has already earned
his place as one of the most supremely original performers of the age.
