'Lucrezia Borgia': Uneven but Not Uneventful

Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia wears a mask at her first entrance, which the soprano singing the role at the opera's 1833 premiere, Henriette Méric-Lalande, did under protest: She was worried her fans might not recognize her.

On Saturday night, Renée Fleming proved that this is indeed a hazard. She made her first appearance at the Washington National Opera swathed in the delicate cloud of a light green cloak (courtesy of John Pascoe, the production's director and designer) with a gold mask covering her face. In the dim lighting, it was hard to tell at first if it was Fleming or a body double. Then she came downstage, removed the mask and left herself exposed.

It is the nature of the bel canto style to expose singers. It took considerable nerve for Fleming to venture this far out of her musical comfort zone. Of course, she's explored this terrain before -- including stints in Bellini's "Il Pirata" at the Met in 2001 and in "Lucrezia" at La Scala in 1998 -- but it remains a stretch for her. Bel canto calls for a single unified line of sound that pulls the ear along: great arcs of exhilarating music. But Fleming's art tends to focus on exploring the details; her soft-grained voice is like the dappling of sun and shade on a tree-lined road. It's beautiful, but it lacks the edge that this repertory calls for.

The softness predominated in her first aria, sung over the figure of her sleeping son Gennaro (who does not know he is her son, a key plot point). Then Gennaro woke up -- and the scene woke up with him. Vittorio Grigolo is a young Italian tenor who has attained star status in Italy and expanded into crossover; his album "In the Hands of Love" made it onto the British charts. Washington audiences know him from his debut here last year in "La Bohème." But it was the first time I'd heard him, and I was thrilled. His voice was bright, firm and exciting, with the vibrant "ping" one associates with the best Italian tenors. He kept up the same level all evening, and he pulled everyone else into focus with him. When he began singing in Act 1, Fleming immediately rose to meet him. Their duet was the highlight of the evening -- indeed, a highlight of the season.

Yet after that duet, the rousing ensemble that concludes the act was muddier than it needed to be, the chorus and ensemble a little ragged despite the heavy beat of Plácido Domingo in the pit. This up-and-down set the tone for an exciting but uneven night.

You don't go to bel canto opera for the story, which is basically an excuse to introduce as much impassioned singing as possible. "Lucrezia Borgia" is filled with misunderstandings between the characters that to a 21st-century audience seem easily solvable with some basic communication tools -- couldn't Lucrezia just tell her husband that Gennaro is her son, not her lover? -- and Lucrezia flings around poison and antidotes with remarkable abandon.

Pascoe, probably wisely, took all of this pretty much at face value, and let it play out in a setting that could have either been Renaissance Italy or a Halloween party in New York's East Village circa 1980. There were exposed brick walls lit by flashes of strobe lights, spiky hairdos and padded leather outfits for Gennaro and his friend Orsini, and lots of convulsive, uncontrolled movement. Pacsoe's one real intervention came in having Gennaro and Orsini become lovers in the last act. Homosexuality may be the only way to make sense of Gennaro's decision to attend a party with his friend rather than fleeing for his life, but it felt a little heavy-handed.

Still, the music is the real point, and for those of us who like this kind of thing, it's delicious stuff. There's also a lot of it, and it vacillated between exciting and ponderous, often without the taut line that serves this style the best. Ponderous, for instance, was the first aria of the veteran Ruggero Raimondi as Lucrezia's husband, Alfonso, who offered the contours of his familiar vocal presence but only truly filled them out when Fleming and Grigolo arrived onstage and picked up the pace. Kate Aldrich, a much-vaunted mezzo-soprano, sang quite well in her company debut as Orsini, though she didn't really show off the fluid richness of her voice at its best until the end of her showpiece aria, "Il segreto per esser felici" (the one "Lucrezia" excerpt really familiar to operagoers).

The unevenness of the smaller parts -- many of them taken by current members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program -- was a shame, since this opera rides more on its ensemble than many others of its ilk. Among the better performers were Robert Cantrell, who was a large, gruff presence as Gubetta, and Yingxi Zhang, a Domingo-Cafritz alum, who stood out with a nice strong tenor voice as Rustighello. WNO can pride itself on having managed the rare feat of fielding two good tenors in a single evening.

As for Fleming: Her performance was a popular success, and a mixed blessing. She certainly deserves credit for the determination and hard work it took her to get through the role. Her journey outside her comfort zone also took her away from some bad habits; she sang straightforwardly, largely without her tic of coquetting with the vocal line. She will never be a great bel canto heroine. Her duet with Raimondi in Act 2 pushed her past what she is really able to do well -- it's a tough sing for anyone -- and the stratospheric notes of this repertory are not really hers to command. But there were notable moments: the way she dug into her lower notes to gain traction, and the evenness of some of the coloratura, particularly in her last bravura aria. This aria is not always done in performance. Donizetti wrote it at the insistence of Méric-Lalande and withdrew it from later productions; he felt it was unseemly for a mother to have a big showpiece over the body of her dead child. WNO, however, gave Fleming the showpiece -- and yet it was a little gentle, a little pale. Pascoe fitted her out with a suit of gold armor for the denouement, but the sense of exposure remained.