Mommy at the Met

"I was brought up to believe that it is polite to wait until you are asked," Soprano Eileen Farrell invariably replied when people wondered why she had never sung at the Met. The Metropolitan Opera's Rudolf Bing continued to ignore Farrell, either because of misplaced gallantry over her heft (5 ft. 5 1/2 in., 180 Ibs.) or because of her limited operatic repertory. But the snub did not hinder the progress of Farrell's career or silence the critics, who acclaimed her the U.S.'s top soprano. Finally, a year ago, Bing and the Met beckoned, and last week before a packed house Soprano Farrell, 40, made her Met debut in an English version of Christoph Willibald von Gluck's Alcestis. Soprano Farrell proved clearly that she belonged on the Met stage, but alas, there were also hints that her debut may have come a little too late.

Dated Legend. Getting ready for the Met meant a major change in Farrell's earthy, uninhibited and unpretentious way of life. She moved into a suite in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel from her twelve-room Staten Island house in order to get away from the distractions of her exuberant 13-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter. Weekends she spent at home with her husband (a retired New York City policeman) and the kids. She studied the stage set carefully, worried over the number of stairs she had to climb, and threatened to wear magnetic clamps on her shoes. A major concern was her stage children. "If I have to pick up those kids," she said, "I'll get a hernia or something." With Translator John Gutman, Farrell changed some of the libretto's more flowery passages. "I'll be damned if I'll sing 'Let me fight trepidation,' " she said. Her version: "Give me strength, give me courage."

But for all of Farrell's breezy modernity, Alcestis was still hopelessly dated, notwithstanding Gluck's prediction that "time does not exist for it, because the piece is founded upon nature and has nothing to do with fashion." Written in 1767, it retells the legend of King Admetus, who is condemned to death by the gods, and of his wife Alcestis, who offers herself as a sacrifice instead. In the end, touched by their mutual devotion, Apollo reprieves them both.

Confident Wait. The opera is typical of everything the romantics fought when they rebelled against classicism: it is full of beautiful melodies but undramatic, full of abstract nobility but without real human beings. Nor was Alcestis improved by the Met's pseudo-Greek staging and top-heavy production featuring, among other banalities, steam puffing from Hades and two clumsy and amateurish ballets.

In the midst of all this. Soprano Farrell proved only a partial blessing. In the middle range her voice is still gloriously warm, rich and powerful, as moving as any voice heard in opera today. But in the upper registers it was strained and at times shrill. Once past the strenuous milestone of a Met debut, Farrell is now eagerly awaiting La Gioconda, her other Met starring role this season. "Gioconda," she says confidently. "That's a role you can really sink your teeth into."

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