{"id":6829,"date":"2025-05-15T22:56:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T22:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/15\/opera-review-elkhannah-pulitzers-antony-and-cleopatra-at-the-met\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T22:56:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T22:56:14","slug":"opera-review-elkhannah-pulitzers-antony-and-cleopatra-at-the-met","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/15\/opera-review-elkhannah-pulitzers-antony-and-cleopatra-at-the-met\/","title":{"rendered":"Opera Review: Elkhannah Pulitzer\u2019s \u2018Antony and Cleopatra\u2019 at the Met"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Julia Bullock as Cleopatra. Photo: Karen Almond \/ Met Opera<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We learn much of what we know about Antony and Cleopatra in Shakespeare\u2019s eponymous play through something of a non-entity. Enobarbus tells us that \u201cAge cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety.\u201d By the time he says this, we\u2019ve met the queen and formed our own impressions; depending on how you take her, Enobarbus\u2019s description might feel like a confirmation, or it might feel like spin.<\/p>\n

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Spin\u2014and its darker cousin, propaganda\u2014is everywhere in Elkhannah Pulitzer<\/a>\u2019s production of John Adams<\/a>\u2019s Antony and Cleopatra<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>which comes to the Met after its premiere at San Francisco Opera in 2022 with a few cuts to the first half and the addition of ballet from Annie-B Parson<\/a>. Elkhannah Pulitzer\u2019s production draws much of its imagery from 1930s newsreels and fascist propaganda flicks. This is not a production about Hollywood, even if it is set in the era of the city\u2019s golden age, but rather one about another industry that manipulates facts to make people seem like gods.<\/p>\n

Adams himself conducts his score, which neatly synthesizes much of what we hear in his other operas; rhythmic propulsion, an excellent grasp of orchestration, and natural dramatic declamation. It\u2019s not a masterpiece, but it is, for the most part, a highly competent contemporary opera, especially in its slimmed-down form. Cleopatra (Julia Bullock<\/a>) and Antony (Gerald Finley<\/a>) are introduced nearly in flagrante. These are public personalities, and sex is equally public for them. Why keep their hands to themselves?\u00a0 Pulitzer\u2019s blocking is often highly dynamic and physical; characters are unafraid to grab, shove, and spin one another off-kilter. All the leaders are varying degrees of histrionic; Antony is impulsive and violent; Caesar is snippy and insecure; Cleopatra seems the most rational at first, but devolves into petty screams and slaps.<\/p>\n

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SEE ALSO: <\/i><\/b>\u2018Schoenberg in Hollywood\u2019 Lands in L.A.<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Pulitzer\u2019s setting produces many worthwhile resonances. Ancient Rome is full of protofascist mythology, much of which was taken up in the twentieth century. Caesar is styled like Mussolini, and Antony and Cleopatra feel a little like Edward VIII<\/a> and Wallace Simpson<\/a>, another couple where desire led to abdication of responsibility and media frenzy. Everywhere, people are being photographed and filmed as they enter and leave the halls of power. Parson\u2019s choreography foretells disaster around the edges of the scenes, as dancers march and goose-step with sinister grace. The stakes are very high for Antony and Cleopatra\u2019s love affair, and they only partly know it.<\/p>\n

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Gerald Finley as Antony and Julia Bullock as Cleopatra. Photo: Karen Almond \/ Met Opera<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mimi Lien<\/a>\u2019s hulking black set is seen through a giant camera lens, its aperture expanding and contracting to reveal various interiors from Alexandria, Rome, and Athens with tantalizing glimpses of water<\/keyword> backstage. It\u2019s an effective device, unlike the many projections of Julia Bullock\u2019s face. Another time, it reveals Cleopatra in a film set drenched in gold lam\u00e9, as if participating in the 1930s craze for herself. Constance Hoffman<\/a>\u2019s costumes are at once sleek and resplendent, with a color palette ranging from neutral sands and beiges to metallic shimmers to rich jewel tones. This is a very good-looking production, one sure to photograph well.<\/p>\n

The opera comes to life most fully during the face-off between Antony and rival Caesar. Caesar is powerful but has less commanding presence than his older counterpart; Antony broods in his chair like a lion while Caesar skitters around the office in a tizzy of outrage. Here, Adams\u2019s music is marvelously intense, foretelling the eventual reversal of the men\u2019s power, the tuba that accompanies Caesar emerging more solidly than the cimbalom that tells of Antony\u2019s indecisiveness.<\/p>\n

Paul Appleby<\/a> was consistently excellent as Caesar, with a crisp, staunch tenor that cut like a dagger. Gerald Finley also had a fine night, after a bit of a rocky start, moving from an imposing scratchy baritone to something sweeter and softer by the second act. Jarrett Ott<\/a> and Taylor Raven<\/a>, making debuts as Agrippa and Cleopatra\u2019s servant Charmian, respectively, each make positive impressions; Ott has a gripping, lucid baritone, while Raven possesses a potent contralto. Alfred Walker<\/a> carries the weight of Shakespeare\u2019s monologues as Enobarbus with a surprisingly subtle edge to his bass-baritone.<\/p>\n

As a woman whose power is more perceived than felt, Julia Bullock is a dramatic powerhouse. She moves with a sizzling physical intensity, whether she is seducing, scrapping or breaking down in a fit of histrionics, and has a rich middle voice. But strained high notes meant that this infinitely varied queen did not have the vocal color to match her presence, especially as fatigue overtook her in the second act.<\/p>\n

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Elizabeth DeShong as Octavia and Gerald Finley as Antony. Photo: Karen Almond \/ Met Opera<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first half finds a great deal of musical and dramatic tension in characters who are immobilized by their conflicting desires. Adams\u2019s score, with its cimbalom, celesta and doubled-harp, thrums and jangles with restless torque, interspersed with nervous tenderness for poor Octavia (Elizabeth DeShong<\/a>, who had something of a slow burn vocally but eventually acquired a beautiful richness).<\/p>\n

The second half is simply immobile, a fault which lies more with the opera\u2019s musical structure than with Pulitzer\u2019s production. The arias for Enobarbus, Caesar, Antony and finally, Cleopatra herself are dramatically static, not least for coming one after another with little variety, and often are blocked without much motion. Caesar\u2019s speech, which recalled mostly the balcony scene in Evita, <\/i>hemmed Appleby into a box that, ironically, made him sound muffled from within its walls. And while Pulitzer\u2019s images and use of color remain striking\u2014Antony\u2019s final aria sees him amongst projected clouds, while Cleopatra returns to die under a massive, eclipsing moon\u2014they feel unmoored from the visual style of the rest of the opera.<\/p>\n

The camera angle disappears entirely, leaving what should have been just the dramatic center of the opera: the love story between these two vain and deluded people. But here Adams gets in his own way, as the music becomes most predictable just as the opera should be reaching its emotional peak. Cleopatra\u2019s final scenes are strangely muted for this larger-than-life figure; somehow, it feels like we know less about her, even as she finally tells us who she is.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange irony in Adams\u2019 book (and in Shakespeare\u2019s) that Cleopatra is more interesting in description than in actuality. But then again, so is Antony, whom everyone describes inaccurately. Cleopatra herself is the worst offender, but Caesar\u2019s eulogy is equally bizarre in its attempts to bury Antony with praise. Gentle? Noble? Brilliant? We see nothing of it, only a man who lashes out at his lover when he fails, reducing her from a multi-faceted creature to the flat epithet, \u201cEgypt.\u201d He\u2019s rewritten the narrative. At its sharpest, Pulitzer\u2019s production recognizes that this opera is about interpersonal propaganda as much as political propaganda. Love and death make us into all spin doctors.<\/p>\n

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Julia Bullock as Cleopatra, Gerald Finley as Antony and Paul Appleby as Caesar. Photo: Karen Almond \/ Met Opera<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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