Theater

James Levine’s back in the Met pit for ‘Cosi’

My fellow opera lovers, our long Metropolitan nightmare is over.

After more than two seasons sidelined by illness and injury, James Levine returned to the Met Tuesday to lead Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte.” So adept and breezy was the performance, it seemed he had been away for no more than a long weekend.

The 70-year-old conductor won not one but three standing ovations from an audience of nearly 4,000. The first, lasting more than a minute, greeted him as soon as he rose up in his wheelchair on a motorized platform that Met stagehands have nicknamed the “maestro lift.”

More cheers met his return for the second act and the end of the performance, when the cast of the opera advanced to the edge of the stage to join in the applause for a clearly overjoyed Levine.

From left, Rodion Progossov, Danielle de Niese and Matthew Polenzani star in Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte.”Metropolitan Opera

In between all the clapping, he showed why he’s been so valuable to the company for more than four decades and over 2,500 performances. The orchestra’s playing was elegant but unaffected, light but substantial enough to fill the vast Met auditorium.

Levine wasn’t the only hero of the night. Though it was announced before the curtain rose that tenor Matthew Polenzani was fighting a cold, he performed the lead role of Ferrando with power and finesse. He even sang a couple of tricky second-act arias that many tenors in perfect health prefer to omit.

In this farcical tale, Ferrando is one of two young men who decide to test their girlfriends’ fidelity (the opera’s title, loosely translated, means “All women cheat”). Each guy, disguised, attempts to seduce the other’s sweetheart.

The slim plot allows plenty of time for elaborate, heartfelt arias, like the virtuous Fiordiligi’s second-act “Per pieta bell’idol mio” (“Forgive me, my treasure”). Here the maestro slowed the tempo to the very limits of soprano Susanna Phillips’ formidable breath control.

Less impressive was mezzo Isabel Leonard as her sister Dorabella, offering bland singing nowhere near as beautiful as her camera-ready face. Opposite her, the young Russian baritone Rodion Pogossov revealed a shimmering, even voice and sharp comic timing.

If bass-baritone Maurizio Muraro, as instigator Don Alfonso, contributed little more than crisp Italian diction, Danielle de Niese won most of the evening’s laughs as the sassy maid, Despina. The soprano’s wacky energy made even the most traditional bits of Lesley Koenig’s 1996 staging seem fresh.

Like any good comedy, “Cosi” has a happy ending. This time around, though, it offered something even more satisfying — a happy new beginning for James Levine.