Poplavskaya out; Haroutounian in

To nobody's great surprise, Marina Poplavskaya has pulled out of the Royal Opera's Les Vêpres siciliennes, citing illness.  The ROH have announced her withdrawal from the first three performances only (17, 21 and 24 October) at this stage, but it is of course possible that more dates may follow.

Her replacement is the scheduled cover Lianna Haroutounian, who stood in for the ROH's other serial canceller, Anja Harteros, earlier this year in Don Carlo.  

Ms Harountounian's previous stabs at Vespri, previously available to all on YouTube, have mysteriously 'gone private' in recent days.

Comments

[David]

I enjoyed Haroutounian in Carlos and so pleased to have the chance to hear her again

[Emil Archambault]

Why is it unsurprising for Poplavskaya to withdraw?
*********
Intermezzo replies - Read the comments on the posts linked to above.

[Jonnie Ash]

I've never particularly liked Poplavskaya, and I too enjoyed Haroutounian in Don Carlos, so I'm definitely pleased by the change of cast! Therefore, I won't be taking up Kasper Holten's invitation to exchange my tickets for another performance! :)

[Siggy]

I've booked for 1st November so guess I'll just have to wait and see. I did enjoy Haroutounian in DonC so I won't be disappointed if that's who turns out on the 1st Nov.

[Miriam]

I am also completely happy about this change. I have tickets for 2 performances and Marina is still scheduled for the second but if she eventually cancels that too I won't mind.

And as for Kasper Holten's invitation to exchange my tickets, that is something I would always have had the right to do in any case if for any reason I did not wish or was no longer able to attend.

[DESR]

Is this a shitstorm in a teacup? Harteros withdrawing is une chose; Marina, never dear!

I must say I remain irritated by K. Holten: the way he offers you something you thought you already had. He basically expects you to be happy when he whips a tired old rabbit from the hat and expects you to be impressed... Grown-ups, anyone?

[John]

But hasn't Poplavskaya actually done pretty much all of her London performances in the past? She sang Robert le Diable and la traviata, despite the threat of withdrawal. I know she cancelled most of her Traviatas in Amsterdam but is her cancellation record really that significant? If anything, her reputation has been cemented by stepping in when other sopranos have cancelled.

[Tenorfach]

Only those being "Friends" of ROH have the option to change/upgrade their ticket. Anyone can put their ticket back up for re-sale and take their chances, there is no guarantee.

If you are "Joe Public" being offered to change your ticket is significant if you booked to hear a particular singer. This is also something ROH has not done often in the past, for opera productions.

So credit where credit is due - I do not consider Marina Poplavskaya being in the league of Domingo or Kaufmann, the only two singers who ROH have offered refunds/exchanges for, to the public, in the past (as far as I remember).

They might do a lot of wrongs, but at least they are giving those wanting to exchange their ticket, the option to do so. And I am referring to "Joe Public" here, to whom it is not a "given right".

Well done Mr Holten and ROH - on the right track.

Tenorfach

**************
Intermezzo replies - You are misinformed. Anyone, ROH Friend or not, can exchange tickets, up to 3 days before a show. Today's cast change announcement merely publicises that fact - usefully, it would appear.

Also, the ROH is not obliged to accept tickets for resale. They will only attempt to resell your ticket if all other seats in that section at that price are sold out, or likely to be so. If they think they won't sell all their own seats, then they won't take your ticket back for resale.

Full rules here:
http://www.roh.org.uk/visit/tickets#exchange

[Kasper Holten]

I have not claimed that this is an offer or anything extraordinary, but simply told ticket holders that they can exchange their tickets if they want to. I think you would be right in criticising us if we did not let people know that they have this right. You might know, but as this debate shows, not everybody might know our T&C in detail. I am sure you can find better reasons to remain irritated with me, if you want to ;-) I hope you will all very much enjoy Les Vepres.

[JohnVecchio]

I'm just a patron and Friend of nearly 50 years' standing but have not received any offer of a ticket exchange, not that I would take it up anyway.

[Tenorfach]

Bravo Mr Holten! I don't often agree with you, but today I do.

Tenorfach

[Kasper Holten]

JohnVecchio, if you have booked a ticket for one of the first three performances, then you should receive an email or a letter from me with this information. If you do not receive it, let me know, as then clearly something is wrong and we should get it sorted (even though you don't want to exchange the ticket in this instance).

[Miriam]

Just to make it clear, although I commented above that the right to exchange was part of the normal terms and not something special related to this cast change, I was not really irritated by this (unlike DESR).

I am looking forward to Les Vepres and hope I shall enjoy it as I have booked two performances! If I like it enough I might go to see it at my local cinema as well. Also going to the Insight tomorrow.

BTW happy Verdi's 200th birthday everyone!

[SJT]

Hands up all those who saw this coming approximately last December, and even warned of it.....
*********
Intermezzo replies - Apart from the usual bunch of vindictive canary-fanciers who've been predicting Poplavskaya's downfall for the last five years and are now crowing, you mean?

[SJT]

Not really, no. Except in my case, since I'm not a canary-fancier, I'm afraid. Oh, and not so much crowing about her vocal technique (does anyone do that?) which has been in sharp decline for at least two years now, if not more, but the fact that, had she stuck to the repertory for which her voice was self-evidently best-suited - German and Russian - rather than her heroically silly excursions into French and (worst of all) Italian, she'd be the world's ranking Senta and Elisabeth and Sieglinde by now.

If there's, as you seem to think, an element of Schadenfruede about this, it's probably due to the extent to which a surprisingly large number of people have noted her poor rep choices, and her ensuing problems in singing them, only to be dismissed over and again by the card-carrying abject fans - whose adoration is always absolute and unconditional, like mother love - as "vindictive canary-fanciers". How it must therefore gall to realise that they were right all along, and to recognise that the Schadenfreude, if such it is, is aimed not at her, but at her more delusional apologists.

[John]

But her promoters in the Italian repertoire include Pappano and Muti - what can we make of that? Her repertoire choices have been peculiar at times but I have the sense with Poplavskaya that her voice does have the potential to sing all these roles well, and that she could even be a dramatic coloratura. I haven't heard her sing any early Verdi, but she was rumoured to be singing Roberto Devereux at the Met at some point in the future and she also had a contract for Maria Stuarda at La Monnaie which was cancelled. I think they could be fantastic roles for her! I am still a bit confused why everyone is convinced that this is anything other than illness. She sang in the Ring Cycle earlier this summer and hasn't previously cancelled many performances in London. Can someone please explain?

[SJT]

Muti single-handedly destroyed Cheryl Studer's voice by encouraging her to sing rep for which her voice wasn't remotely suited. Like Elena in Vespri. She, like Poplavskaya, was actually a JugendDramatisch of decidedly German bent. But conductors are the world's worst when it comes to exploiting singers in the wrong roles and repertory (think of Karajan, destroying poor Ricciarelli by getting her to sing Aida and Turandot: and he's to blame for Carreras's early decline as well).

Of course she can still sing Wagner. That's what she was born to sing. Long note values, slow-moving vooal lines, no chopped noodles. But Violetta and Elena are different propositions, requiring flexibility and decent coloratura: she has neither naturally, and you can hear the awful effort involved for her in trying to encompass them. She was NEVER going to be able to sing the Act V Bolero in Vespri.

[Yes Addison]

Well, we will see. She does have the Elisabeth scheduled for the spring of the coming year with Seiffert, Mattei, and Pape, conducted by Barenboim. I hope she will have recovered by then. The report I have heard of what came out when she tried to sing in rehearsal for Vespri is very worrying. For the record, I was/am a fan, though certainly not one deaf to the things she obviously could not do well vocally as Violetta, Marguerite, Donna Anna, Leonora. That said, I cannot think of anyone in my theatergoing experience who could have gotten up off a couch and "traveled" about five feet across the stage to sing "D'amor sull'ali rosee" to a Manrico who was tied up in a cabinet overheard, and made the scene seem truthful and moving. Just writing it here, I cannot believe I did not laugh. She has/had a real theatrical gift.

[Yes Addison]

John, I hope it is just an illness, but there have been alarm bells. She does a lot of things that are not signs of a reliable, secure technique; that's been evident since she hit the scene. There's a lot of tension in the throat, and hers can sound like a different voice even in a second verse of the same music. She hasn't been a chronic canceler, but she has withdrawn from some things (from the Meyerbeer, she withdrew, was replaced, and then ended up singing anyway), and the voice is sounding rougher to me the later you go in the period from 2008 to 2012. There's been a fair amount of pleading "allergies" or "indisposition" or the like when she has sung, as if a hedge against perceptions of a decline.

As below, I hope she gets it together and does well in what she has coming up, a few Tatianas at the Met, Wagner's Elisbeth in Linden, etc. She's given me some memorable times in various operas in the last several years, even when the singing has had problems, and I think she's a more intelligent and thoughtful interpreter than some who do have reliable technique. I admire the zeal with which she immerses herself in a character. If she has been dashed on the rocks already, still several years shy of her 40th birthday, it will be a source of sadness to me.

[Peter Gartner]

Poplavskaya has had pneumonia in the past and also suffered a collapse when in Russia during the heatwave she breathed in noxious chemicals from burning trees. I am sorry to hear that she has withdrawn from these engagements and hope she recovers soon from her illness (whatever that is), but it is probably genuine, and not an excuse.

I think she is an amazing actress/singer but sometimes her voice seems strained. It is interesting that people think she should have been singing Wagner and Strauss instead of Mozart and Verdi.

[SJT]

I don't think anybody is disputing her "real theatrical gift". Even I, not much inclined to put up with rough vocalism for any amount of dramatic efficacy, found her solitary Desdemona here heart-stopping, for all that she was replacing Harteros who had already offered an object lesson in the purest vocal style. Heard after her, Poplavskaya sounded almost grotesquely ropey, with no real legato, compromised emission and shortened breath line, and even pitch issues.

BUT.

I sat through four Harteros Desdemonas, marvelling at the sound, yet utterly unconvinced she had the faintest idea - or at least the abilty to put across - any kind of emotional response to the music. Whereas Popsy, completely to my surprise, had me in total floods of tears that sprang out of nowhere, simply because of the depths of apparently genuine feeling she brought to the role, rough singing notwithstanding. And I refuse to believe that it is coincidence that Desdemona is easily the most Wagnerian of all Verdi's heroines, with its long, slow undecorated lines and reliance on declamatory power and high dramatic gifts to put it across.

So one wishes her well, not least because she is specially gifted. But not for Violetta, Elena, Marguérite and (Meyerbeer's) Alice, all of which the ROH has insisted on inflicting on both us and her. If she packed up banging her musical head against a self-imposed repertory brick wall, most of her vocal problems would vanish overnight.

[Peter Gartner]

Had a quick look at Marina's schedule since 2008, and Barenboim has only ever had her sing Wagner whenever he has conducted her in opera. Maybe he will guide her further in that direction.

[Mireille]

Haratuna sang Hélène "en même temps" in the Frankfurter Opéra right before the last week's opening at ROH! It's very odd she "happened to be there when Marina Poplavskaya started the rehearsal. We are surpris because she was not planned and this day 22.10, the original planned cast will perform after several reviews of this production were not in favor of Haratuna singing (and screaming as we perceived! What for into the maestro to replace a great artist as Marina Poplavskaya with a second hand soubrette from Armenia!...et quelle production triste! Covent garden needs to revisiter le passé (Zefferelli!) pour Verdi! c'est mauvais!and Poplavaskaya didn't even cancel when at ROH she was injured from hitting the side lights in an Onegin production and suffered for a long time...so problems may not be vocal but like a foot injury when you cannot walk...people should think more before writing stupid things!
*******
Intermezzo replies - Haroutounian gave her last performance in Frankfurt a full month before the ROH premiere. Elza van den Heever was brought in for the last couple of Frankfurt shows.

[Siggy]

Well it seems that Poplavskaya has recovered more quickly than anticipated and is back for tonight's performance. It seems a shame to mess around Ms Haroutounian although I'm keen to see what Popsy can do with the role - dramatically if not vocally.

[Patricia]

What a lot of moaners you all are! I've been reading the Intermezzo blog for about a year and find that the litany of moans and complaints about operas and opera singers far outweighs the positives. I wonder why you haven't all quit and taken up gardening or knitting. I am looking forward to hearing Marina Poplavskaya next Tuesday. She is a terrific actress and I love her voice. The point has already been made - Miss Poplavskaya was scheduled to sing all performance of Les Vepres and you bought tickets (some of you for more than one performance) thus if you hate her so why did you bother?