Gustavo Dudamel may be the most famous conductor alive, but the second coming of Leonard Bernstein he is not. Such was the import of an ominously neutral, nondescript performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony which Dudamel elicited from the New York Philharmonic on May 20th. Any conductor with glimmerings of charisma is automatically likened to Bernstein, who embodied classical music for several generations of listeners.
In the second movement, Dudamel came moderately alive, giving proper oomph to Mahler’s thumping country-dance rhythms. The Rondo-Burleske reverted to machinelike virtuosity, its gnashing irony and rancor sidelined. In the final Adagio, the Philharmonic strings produced a handsome, burnished sound, yet there was no undertow of valedictory passion, no time-stopping heartbreak at the end.
The Met had long been in dire need of a workable “Don Giovanni.” Three previous stagings, by Franco Zeffirelli, Marthe Keller, and Michael Grandage, fell flat. Van Hove’s version, which was first seen at the Paris Opera, in 2019, has broken the curse, even if its relentless, nearly colorless austerity wears thin over three hours. The sets, by Jan Versweyveld, evoke Renaissance buildings rendered in brutalist concrete, in the manner of the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa.
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