A ‘Tosca' Shows the Boston Symphony's Conductor at His Best

New York Times

7 days ago

Andris Nelsons may have become a fitful, inconsistent music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but every once in a while, he proves that he has still got it.
Such was the lesson on Saturday night at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home in the Berkshires, as Nelsons and a starry cast delivered a concert 'Tosca' of high intensity and even higher emotion.
This Tanglewood season is a solid one, with the premiere of a new John Williams piano concerto written for Emanuel Ax on the agenda next weekend, a Gabriella Ortiz-curated Festival of Contemporary Music sprawling around the grounds at the same time, and the obligatory appearances of Yo-Yo Ma, famous friend of the orchestra, to come in August. New at Tanglewood this year: tastefully installed screens next to the Shed stage that show the musicians at work, and, by some miracle, enhanced cellphone service. Still unchanged: the humidity.
But 'Tosca' was always likely to be a high point of the season, and it was. Opera has often brought out the best in Nelsons in Boston, and the closer to the most commonplace parts of the repertoire the work has been, the stronger the performance from him. Wagner transfixed him as a child, and it was at the Latvian National Opera that his career began to take off in his 20s. Now 46, he rarely looks more engaged on the podium than when he is supporting a singer in full flow.
And for this Puccini, Nelsons had some singers of quality to support. Bryn Terfel sang his last staged Scarpia at the Met earlier this year, but he still brings unrivaled authority and conviction to a role that has defined his career. Has the passing of time brought a more vicious edge of desperation to his portrayal, as if an older Scarpia might feel as though this is his last, appalling chance to corner his prey, causing him to act with such depravity? Either way, Terfel's snarling chief of the Roman police remains a privilege to see.
So, too, the glorious Cavaradossi of the Korean baritone-turned-tenor SeokJong Baek. Here, as at the Met last fall, his extraordinarily firm, high cries of 'Vittoria!' drew instant applause, and they were far from the only point at which this colossal voice, wielded by turns with machined precision and melting sensitivity, could have earned such approval.
Nelsons continues to sustain the soprano Kristine Opolais, his former wife, at a difficult moment in her career as her voice declines. Her sickly Katarina Ismailova made sense in the Boston Symphony's performances of 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk' last year, and this Tosca seemed similarly conceived to wring as much as dramatically possible from the sadly limited vocal resources she now has available to her. She has always been a compelling actor; trapped, fragile and honest, the result was a moving if far from musically convincing assumption of the title character.
Dan Rigazzi's sensible concert staging smartly coordinated the central trio, the keenly taken minor roles (Patrick Carfizzi, a fine Sacristan), and what appeared to be most of the choral singers in western Massachusetts (the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Vocal Program). Having Spoletta (Neal Ferreira) search the rogues at the back of the orchestra for the rebel Angelotti (Morris Robinson) was one of several small but telling directorial touches.
And the Boston Symphony itself? Making the orchestra the star of the operatic show, which is what concert performances do by raising the instrumentalists out of the pit, has its difficulties; let the orchestra loose, and the singers can be inaudible, but hold it back too much, and you start to question the point. Even Nelsons, with all his sympathy for vocal artists, typically struggles to get the balance right.
Still, it was more than worthwhile to hear players like these in a score like this. Take the delightful woodwind scampering as the Sacristan fussed in the first act as an example, or the acidic, metallic slice of the cellos as they hinted at Cavaradossi's torture in the second, let alone the great floods of string tone that Nelsons was rightly happy to unleash as the score took melodic wing.
It was hard not to wonder, watching Nelsons at work, if this is not what he should be doing all the time: polishing the classics to an admirable sheen at one of the great opera houses of old. Eleven years into his Boston posting, his tenure remains stalled. Even a Beethoven cycle this past January was erratic, its successes unquestionable, its misfires unaccountable.
His interpretive diffidence lets soloists enjoy their spotlight. Yuja Wang was magnificently stylish on Sunday with the energetic trainees of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto, a piece whose dreamy flights and angular blasts might have been written specifically for her. But the same trait too frequently robs purely symphonic works of the vitality they need.
Maybe, then, there was something to be read into the planned return of Esa-Pekka Salonen to the Boston Symphony the week before 'Tosca,' or more likely not: The incomparable Finn, now freed from the disasters unfolding at the San Francisco Symphony, has conducted only four programs with this ensemble in his entire career, the most recent more than a decade ago. Infer what you will, but the story was short. Salonen withdrew for personal reasons, and Thomas Adès stepped in.
Adès has enjoyed a longstanding collaboration with the Boston Symphony, recording his Piano Concerto and 'Totentanz' with it and serving as its artistic partner for three years, but it has always felt as if a bit more could be made of the relationship.
Best known as a composer, Adès continues to improve as a conductor, still reveling in the hidden details of the scores he admires, but more technically able now than before both to unearth them and to put them into context. On July 13, he offered Salonen's program unchanged, giving a forceful reading of Gabriella Smith's naturalistic 'Tumblebird Contrails,' a wonderfully creative accompaniment to Pekka Kuusisto's darkly introspective solo in the Sibelius Violin Concerto, as well as a thoroughly meticulous Sibelius Fifth Symphony that treated the piece as if it were radically new.
All of which led to a fugitive thought, untethered to any present reality: If Adès led an orchestra, what might he achieve?