How a Coloratura Soprano Saved the Met

(March 20) -- Two weeks ago, the Metropolitan Opera in New York found itself in a predicament. Ten days before the opening night of "Hamlet," a French opera that had not been performed there for 103 years, the production had no soprano. Natalie Dessay, who was scheduled to perform, had fallen sick and had to cancel.

Meanwhile, unsuspecting in Austria, a German soprano named Marlis Petersen was finishing a run of "Medea" at the Vienna State Opera, where she had the lead role. That opera is particularly grueling, requiring four weeks of study just to understand the words, and vocally demanding, with musical jumps from low to high. She was ready for a few weeks of rest at home in Greece ("where my flat lives") before moving on to the next job.

Instead, she got a call from Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera. He needed her in New York, to save the opera.

"I thought it was quite insane," assistant conductor Pierre Vallet told AOL News. "It was a very extraordinary situation."

Vallet had dealt with sickness on opening night in the past, but there was always an understudy who could sing the part from the wings while the lead acted it out on stage. He had never encountered someone actually missing on opening night.

"At first moment I thought, 'I can't,' because I was already three months in Vienna doing this contemporary thing, which is, it's so demanding, and I was really tired and was happy to have a week off at home," Petersen said.

But she decided to do it anyway.

Vallet flew from New York to Vienna, arriving March 9, one week before opening night. The next day he and Petersen got down to work. She had a five-act, three-hour French opera to learn in six days.

"We were starting from scratch," Vallet said. "We went through the entire role in one afternoon."

They began by watching examples of French theater so Petersen could hear how the language flowed on stage. On March 11, she began memorizing her part, and Vallet explained the details of the production, from music to stage direction.

Petersen had played the part of Ophelia in 2006 in Germany and was scheduled to do two of the performances at the Met in April.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, I don't remember anything.' But when I took the score and I started to sing suddenly it was very familiar and it came back in a way, the music and the whole feeling to it," Petersen told AOL News, sitting in a sunny apartment 13 floors above Manhattan. "I was astonished."

On March 12, Petersen had her final performance of "Medea." Back in New York the cast of "Hamlet" had a dress rehearsal without her. On March 13 she was on a plane to New York, watching a production of "Hamlet" performed in Geneva. By the time she got off the plane that evening, she had memorized most of her part.

"Everybody sort of knew that there was hope coming from Vienna," Vallet said.

So began a whirlwind of dress fittings and rehearsals with the stage directors, Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, Saturday evening and Sunday.

"I was crazy, you know. I didn't feel myself anymore. I was just being taken from spot to spot to do things," Petersen said. " 'Medea' was very wild and outgoing, and this is very closed up, all feelings are behind a curtain and she's not allowed to show them. And this was really like going from North Pole to South Pole. And to find this in two days wasn't so easy."

On Monday, though it was their day off, the rest of the cast and the orchestra came in to rehearse Ophelia's parts. It was the first time Petersen had met Simon Keenlyside, the British baritone who plays Hamlet. She had a few hours to get a sense of her colleagues, who had been working together for several weeks, and to get in sync with the 91-piece orchestra, a huge leap from singing with a sole piano.

"It's an extremely difficult sing for Ophelia," Keenlyside said. "It's right at the extremes of the upper register of a soprano. It's very difficult and also it demands stage presence, charisma and theatrical abilities as well. You can't just stand and sing it these days, despite what our critics say."

Tuesday night was the premier. Petersen had six days under her belt. The performance would be the first time she had run through the entire opera.

"You can't really feel confident when you've had one rehearsal," Keenlyside said.

The show went on. Vallet, watching the audience, noticed an intense concentration on the faces of the patrons -- a rare occurrence, he said, for people watching a relatively unknown opera. He sent a text message to Petersen's phone in her dressing room saying, "Congratulations, it's working."

Wednesday, the New York Times published a review of the opera, saying Petersen was a "lovely woman with a bright, alluring and agile voice, she seemed immersed in a role that, to judge from her beautiful and emotionally vulnerable singing, she clearly relishes."

The soprano was thrilled. "To have been chosen, to be here, to save the Metropolitan Opera, and to have this wonderful piece and these fantastic colleagues," she said.

After the performance and after the after-party, she could finally get some rest, with the memory of opening night planted squarely in her mind.

"Imagine the first scene when I come in," she said. "It's coming from backstage the whole way to front stage, and you see from the angle walking in, you see the whole Metropolitan audience, and you can't imagine what a feeling that is."