bsence of nearly 16 years, he had returned to the Metropolitan Opera.
The 73-year-old conductor gave a sweeping romantic account of Tchaikovsky's "The Queen of Spades" on Friday night. Yet, it was an odd performance marred by the vocal problems of ailing tenor Ben Heppner and staging glitches.
One of the Met's goals in recent years has been to improve the quality of its guest conductors, reducing the percentage of human metronomes who lead many revivals.
Lorin Maazel came back in January for the first time since 1963, and Daniel Barenboim is to make his long-awaited debut on Nov. 28. Esa-Pekka Salonen and Riccardo Muti are slated for debuts next season.
Ozawa is known best for his tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a position he held from 1973-2002, and he currently is chief conductor of the Vienna State Opera. His only previous appearances at the Met were in five performances of Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" in December 1992.
Valery Gergiev conducted this "Queen" production when it was new in 1995 and when it was revived four years later. While his account was propulsive and exciting, Ozawa infused more sweep, especially in lush dance numbers.
Heppner, the world's top heldentenor, starred in this Elijah Moshinsky production as the obsessed army officer Ghermann when it opened 13 years ago and gave a brilliant account. He was not in good voice Friday. He started cracking notes in the first act and continued cracking them throughout the night. The usual heft to his voice was lacking.
"Ben was indisposed," his manager, Bill Guerri, said in an e-mail Saturday. "He wasn't feeling well, but decided to sing the performance."
When Heppner had a similar problem during performances of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg" in 2001, the vocal issue was found to be caused by blood pressure medication. The specific nature of Heppner's illness Friday was not known.
Other aspects of the performance also went awry. When a spotlight was on the Countess in her key scene with Ghermann in the second act, the light mysteriously kept turning on and off. Later in the opera, one of the large doors that pulled to the side to open each scene lurched with a noise and got stuck.
As for the rest of the cast, mezzo Felicity Palmer stood out with a harrowing portrayal of the Countess, who dies of fright when Ghermann tries to find out the secret three-card sequence. Maria Guleghina sang Lisa, Ghermann's love interest and The Countess' granddaughter, with energy and abandon. Rounding out the cast were winning performances by Vladimir Stoyanov (Prince Yeletsky), Mark Delavan (Count Tomsky) and Ekaterina Semenchuk (Pauline).
There are six more performances through Dec. 13.
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Metropolitan Opera: http://www.metopera.org
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