Over Puccini, diva bonds with conductor

Anna Netrebko, the Russian prima donna, treats her career like a contact sport, with a refreshing quantity of nerve. She has lately been adding to her repertory at a furious pace, but that alone might not have been providing enough excitement for her, and she raised the bar here last week. Her first performance in the title part of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” on Thursday was a threefold debut: role, Rome and Riccardo.

The last of those may have been the most daunting. Riccardo Muti, the production’s conductor and the “honorary conductor for life” at the Rome Opera, is not known to suffer gladly either fools or divas. His rigorous rehearsal regimen and focus on the intricate details of a score can put him at odds with headstrong stars, and these days he often works with younger and lesser-known artists.

But Ms. Netrebko, joining him and appearing in Rome for the first time, was clearly game. She has lately been moving away from ingénue roles sung by lyric sopranos and into deeper, darker ones in operas like Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and “Macbeth.” On Friday, in a telling symbol of this transformation, she canceled a planned debut as Marguerite in Gounod’s “Faust” — a lyric-soprano sing — at the Royal Opera House in London, saying, with an honesty rare in such statements, “The role is not right for me.”

A few years ago, she made a specialty of the frothier main character in Massenet’s “Manon” — based, like the Puccini work, on the short novel by Abbé Prévost about two heedless, doomed lovers in a society defined by wealth and class — and now she has unveiled the heavier “Manon Lescaut.” Mr. Muti, one of the most respected living exponents of the Italian operatic tradition, is perhaps uniquely qualified to help guide her through this treacherous transition, and their collaboration was a resounding success.

There was no self-indulgence or showboating in Ms. Netrebko’s performance. (I saw the second show, on Sunday.) Her voice, at the moment, has weight without heaviness, and this was delicate, subtle singing and acting. She handled with clarity and sensitivity even a passing moment with a girl’s doll soon after her entrance, establishing Manon’s youthfulness with affecting sweetness.

While, in the beginning Ms. Netrebko seemed cautious, her voice losing focus at its bottom, it became clear that her understatement was a conscious choice. In keeping with the sober, melancholy quality of Mr. Muti’s conducting and of the production — directed by the actress Chiara Muti, his daughter — this Manon was less vivacious than dreamy, lost in her thoughts.

Ms. Netrebko’s voice still had a vital liveliness, though, in passages like the tiny scales she sang as she confessed to Des Grieux to being just a poor girl. In the beginning of the second act, when Manon is living in luxury in Paris, she sounded alert and insouciant, yet warm.

There is still room for improvement in the relationship she creates between voice and drama in these early acts. Her pained, nostalgic aria “In quelle trine morbide” felt more like a collection of stunning vocal effects — a gauzy yet clear half-voice, shining high notes, clarity of tone — than like an expression of deep feeling. And when Des Grieux returned to win her back, there was no energy in her exclamation “Tu, tu, amore? Tu?”

But those who have heard her interpretations of Mimi in Puccini’s “La Bohème” and Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” will remember that Ms. Netrebko comes into her own when her characters have lost everything, and that was the case here. While never losing a fundamental dignity and restraint, her fourth-act outpouring, “Sola, perduta, abbandonata,” was full of pain and fearlessly sung.

I once read a review of Victor de Sabata’s classic recording of Puccini’s “Tosca,” based on a rather pulpy play by Victorien Sardou, that observed that de Sabata treated the opera as high tragedy more than melodrama, more Racine than Sardou. This is Mr. Muti’s conception of “Manon Lescaut,” too, summed up in the rich, somber and noble downbeat to the fourth act.

His account of the opera’s prelude sounded the way a snow globe looks: rounded and smooth, yet with glimmering, glittering details. There were moments with a kaleidoscopic transparency that seemed to anticipate Debussy. Mr. Muti’s Verdi is always detailed and intriguing but can sometimes feel relentless, its energy crossing over into anxiety. But in this Puccini score, he relaxed into the arching phrases of Des Grieux’s first-act aria “Donna non vidi mai.”

Mr. Muti opened up the lyricism while always emphasizing the somberness of the music, digging into the dark chords that lower the mood after a sprightly chorus. He adroitly charted the way that Manon and Des Grieux’s first love duet goes from sweet to spiritual. The recollection of earlier music that introduces “Sola, perduta, abbandonata” sounded like memory itself: strangely clear, yet glassy and distant. The last scene had the solemn heart of a funeral march, overlaid with soaring melody.

But in the context of the rest of the production, Mr. Muti and Ms. Netrebko were something like Manon and Des Grieux at the end of the opera, isolated on the Louisiana plain. They were oases in a performance that was a comparative desert.

Des Grieux is an unforgiving combination of light and heavy, and the Azerbaijani tenor Yusif Eyvazov sang with rough, raw appeal, his fast, wide vibrato propelling the sound into the theater. When not covered by a strange, murky, throaty veil, his voice rang out with ardent strength. His artistry has promise and problems.

Ms. Muti’s production was both promising and problematic. Dimly lit and gloomy, with touches of stylization, it featured the sand dunes of the final scene encroaching even on the earlier acts, as if to underline the shaky foundation of Manon and Des Grieux’s brief happiness.

That’s not an unintelligent idea, but it’s not enough, and the show would have kept receding into dreariness had it not been for Mr. Muti and Ms. Netrebko. It’s not always a given these days that conductors and singers of their level converge. May this be the first time of many.