The Lone Ranger rode back onto the Metropolitan Opera stage last night on the coattails of an exciting new production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (a k a William Tell) that is a testament to the composer’s genius and makes a strong case for bringing it back into the repertory.
With a fine cast led by Gerald Finley in the title role, Bryan Hymel as his conflicted compatriot Arnold, and the excellent soprano Marina Rebeka as the Austrian princess Mathilde, Guillaume Tell is an opera that boasts some of Rossini’s greatest choral and orchestral music and the superb Met chorus and orchestra deliver rousing performances that alone are worth the ticket.
The new production by the Lebanese director Pierre Audi is a blend of almost biblical and futuristic imagery – townsfolk in gray robes, carrying staffs, battling Austrian goons in black leather coats, wielding truncheons. A skeleton of a ship hangs in the middle of the proscenium and wooden platforms roll across the stage. There are bars of floating red and white lights and some fairly unconvincing rocks and boulders to represent the Swiss Alps. Oddly, however, most of it works.
Rossini wrote Guillaume Tell for the Paris Opera in 1829. Despite its initial popularity it fell out of the repertory fairly soon, not least of which because of its four-act length. It has not been on a Met stage since 1931 and never before in its original French, making this revival seem almost like a house premier. Rossini was just 37 when he composed it and although he lived another 39 years, it was his last opera.
For most of the past century, the opera has been known primarily through its Overture. Rossini Overtures are among the greatest in all opera and are often played on their own by symphonic orchestras in concerts around the world. The “William Tell Overture” is known by just about every American, at least of a certain age, for its galloping passage that is the theme music for “The Lone Ranger.”
Under Fabio Luisi’s brilliant baton, the Met Orchestra delivers a performance that is at once subtle and stirring, starting with the melodic, almost melancholic, opening bars, followed by a storm and then a pastoral section, and ending with the familiar fanfare and theme. Luisi sets a pace as though Silver were coming down the home stretch of the Kentucky Derby. It is quite simply thrilling.
One of Rossini’s innovations for Guillaume Tell was his blending of choral and ensemble pieces with dancing. Every opera at the time had a ballet, but Rossini integrated dancing into the flow of the action itself at several points. The opening scene, for example, has the chorus singing about the impending marriage of three couples, who then dance a pas de six before some Habsburg storm troopers come in to break up the festivities.
Rossini based the opera on a play by Schiller about Wilhelm Tell, a legendary Swiss hero from the Middle Ages. Like the Masked Man who fought for the downtrodden in the Wild West (and appropriated the Overture as his theme), Tell rallies the Swiss to rebel against Austrian rule and their brutal governor, Gesler, whose troops kill, kidnap, and burn villages at a whim.
It’s an age-old tale of tyranny and the struggle for freedom against oppression, one that could be extrapolated to the 21st century and one that was dear to Rossini as Italy was in the throes of its struggle for unification. The other familiar part of the opera, of course, concerns Tell, his son, an apple, and a crossbow. When Gesler arrests Tell he orders the Swiss freedom fighter to shoot an apple off his son’s head under threat of killing them both.
Finley, a Canadian bass-baritone, is strong as Tell. He has a commanding voice that could rouse the rebel spirit in anyone. His third-act duet with his son Jemmy “Sois immobile” (“Stay motionless”) in the apple-shooting scene is especially moving as is his duet with the lovesick Arnold, convincing him to join the rebellion.
Hymel delivers a solid performance as Arnold, the son of the local elder whose love for the Habsburg princess Mathilde causes him to waver over whether to fight with Tell or sign up with the Austrians. He has a ringing tenor that is a bit nasal at times, but he scored on Arnold’s big final-act aria “Asile hereditaire.”
Rebeka, a Latvian soprano, is excellent as Mathilde, also torn between her native Austria and the cause of the Swiss. She has a fervent and appealing voice that ranges from higher to lower registers with ease and tosses off runs with assured aplomb. Her second-act aria “Sombre foret” was full of yearning and a vocal high point of the evening.
The Italian bass Marco Spotti gave an impressive Met debut as Tell’s fellow rebel Walter Furst and the Illinois soprano Janai Brugger delivered a touching turn in the role of Jemmy, Tell’s son. The New York mezzo Maria Zifchak added a tender note as Tell’s wife Hedwige, and the South Korean bass Kwangchul Youn was in top voice as Melcthal, the town elder who is murdered by the Austrians.
