By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2007

NEW YORK -- When it came time for the first curtain call at the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday night, there were only two artists onstage: the tenor Plácido Domingo, who is also the head of the Washington National Opera, and Susan Graham, one of this country's finest mezzo-sopranos. They were rewarded handsomely by the audience for their roles in Gluck's "'Iphigénie en Tauride" -- he as Oreste and she as his long-lost sister -- but it was a rather strange gesture to have them, and only them, get the first blast of bravos. There are other stars to this show, and while a Domingo-Graham curtain call respects the hierarchies of operatic fame, it doesn't give an accurate sense of who did spectacular work in this rare production of Gluck's late-career classic, not seen at the Met since 1917.

Domingo was a star of the show, but his work wasn't always stellar. Audience enthusiasm for his contribution no doubt had something to do with loyalty and respect: In a profession in which many highly paid, brand-name singers ply the same half-dozen roles for decades on end, Domingo was singing yet another new role, his 125th in an extraordinarily long and far-ranging career. No one who cares about opera could have been less than obsessively curious about how the star tenor, now thick into his 60s, would perform the role of Gluck's Oreste.

It is all so counterintuitive. Singers, as they grow older, generally develop voices that are bigger, heavier and darker. The voice mirrors the progress of the body and the mind, from sprightly agility and superficiality to solidity and gravity and, eventually, some bigness around the middle, then death. Gluck, an 18th-century composer who suggests (to the uninitiated) flavors of Mozart, wrote for voices that are generally lighter and more flexible than the battle-tested behemoth of sound that Domingo, who has been singing Wagner for years, produces.

But late in his career, Domingo is doing what he has always done. He's taking chances, exploring new things, putting himself out there. For Washingtonians, his New York foray into Gluck is of particular interest, given that he will sing a role by Handel -- a composer who falls a little earlier than Gluck on the 18th-century timeline -- in Washington later this season.

Can he do it? Yes and no. He sang every note with the distinctive Domingo timbre, and he kept up with the brisk tempos that conductor Louis Langrée was setting. There was none of the sweaty, desperate, wait-for-me quality that singers not used to the musical challenges of the 18th century often produce. He didn't embarrass himself. But his French was unintelligible, and when compared with another tenor, Paul Groves, who was singing the role of Oreste's best friend, Pylade, Domingo sounded a bit blunt and gristly.

Comparing Domingo with Groves isn't entirely fair. The role of Oreste was originally written for baritone, though a later version of the opera recast it a bit higher. In any case, Oreste's music lies lower in the vocal range and is consequently a bit less brilliant. If Domingo sounded older, gruffer and less agile than Groves, that is because (a) he is, and (b) the music encourages that sound.

Domingo's characterization was also more enthusiastically operatic than classically Gluckian. If this 1779 opera had been written a century later, Domingo's extremes of emotion and flailing body language would make more sense. Oreste is a very troubled young chap who has murdered his mother -- vengeance for her murder of his father, which was vengeance for his father's murder of Oreste's sister, Iphigénie, who for some reason is still alive and presiding over a murderous religious cult in the land of Scythia. A cult that intends to murder Oreste.

If that sounds like the kind of opera that pop culture loves to parody as over-the-top emotionally and narratively preposterous, well, welcome to Gluck. The composer, son of a humble woodsman, saw himself as a reformer of opera, which had by his time become an arena for vocal gymnastics. Gluck announced that he would bring opera back to its proper roots, in drama. And the drama he would root it in was the classical tragedy of the Greeks.

So he plundered Euripides and borrowed widely from the various national operatic traditions then current to create a musical form that was stately and pure, with a seething undercurrent of blood-and-guts drama. Later composers would find inspiration in the extremes and perversities just barely contained behind the elegant classical facade. Even more than Mozart, Gluck paved the road to Verdi, Wagner and Strauss.

It wasn't just Domingo's interpretation that emphasized the 19th-century forces nascent in the work. The entire production, directed by Stephen Wadsworth, was an attempt to connect Gluck to romanticism and beyond. The set divided the action into two rooms, a large temple chamber with blood-red walls, and a smaller room with rotting wooden beams and a dungeon lighting scheme. With a giant statue onstage and flickering oil lamps on the walls, you could stage Verdi's massive Egyptian fantasy, "Aida," on Thomas Lynch's "Iphigénie" set without too much dissonance.

But Daniel Pelzig's choreography was just plain odd: whirling dervishes, the portentous gestures of Martha Graham and the percussive vulgarities of "Stomp." This cast the whole proceedings in a historical Nowheresville of postmodernity -- particularly unfortunate given the huge role dance plays in Gluck's opera.

The production seemed intent on putting dance where it shouldn't be, and leaving it out where the opera requires it. At the ends of Acts 2 and 4, dance music was used not for dance but to stage dramatic tableaux. The effect was weird, though effective in its own way: its own 21st-century psycho navel-gazing way.

Keeping everyone honest, at least musically, was the conductor Langrée, who brought the Met orchestra to new heights in a score that other opera orchestras might have trod underfoot. Often, the engine driving this music -- Gluck's deliciously complex yet repetitive accompaniment figuration -- has a knock in it, an off-centered little ping that gives every aria a distinctive gait. Langrée never failed to find the essence of the peculiarity, characterize it perfectly and do it all within the confines of a profound understanding of period style.

As Iphigénie, Susan Graham was the proper star of the evening, with Groves just behind her. Graham can negotiate wide skips, begin melodic lines in a near-whisper, produce seamless and nuanced phrases and never lose the warm, pulsing quality of voice that makes her so fine in French repertoire. Only occasionally was her voice covered by the orchestra, only very occasionally did she compensate with a tone that took on a little edge. Her acting is minimalist but not expressionless. After a life of hard knocks, Graham's Iphigénie is a matronly amalgam of unprocessed grief and misery. At the end of the opera, which should be a happy ending, Graham's character is still miles away from her happy place.

Washingtonians curious about how Domingo will sing role No. 126 -- Bajazet in Handel's "Tamerlano" -- will have to wait until April. In many ways, Domingo's muscular Oreste sidestepped the challenges of baroque style that he may have to confront directly in Handel. And yet, watching him in New York, it was hard not to feel a bit dastardly for putting his most recent role under the microscope. Late in a distinguished career, Domingo is clearly taking on new challenges for the fun of it. And if he wants to have a little fun, let him, so long as he can do it without discrediting himself or marring the evening. He did neither at the Met on Tuesday.