FROM AROUND THE WORLD: NEW YORK CITY.(Review)

The preamble to the Met's benefit concert on Sunday, October 29, was an opera plot in itself. A program, involving Bryn Terfel, Cecilia Bartoli and the Met Chorus and Orchestra, had been prepared and printed, emphasizing mainly Mozart and Rossini. On Friday, it became clear that Bartoli, a victim of laryngitis in Boston, would be unable to sing. By Saturday, a replacement had been found in Olga Borodina, making necessary a freshly printed insert for the program: Borodina's repertory doesn't lean on Mozart or Rossini. Then, on Sunday, Borodina herself was incapacitated. Quick replacements were enlisted from current casts of La Boheme (Cristina Gallardo-Domas, Sondra Radvanovsky) and Turandot (Richard Margison).

If this shifted the focus from a two-person to a one-person show, Terfel was the man for the job. Sharing a few comfortable, judiciously brief comments with the audience, he cut a variety of figures onstage, from Leporello to Iago to Falstaff. Though the bass-baritone added enough shtick to rouse a few laughs, it was his resounding tone and knack for vocal characterization that carried the evening. Only the Mephistopheles serenade from Faust, done with more Chaliapin-style snarl than Parisian suavity, seemed off the mark; French panache arrived in the next number, Terfel's duet with Margison from Les Pecheurs de Perles, which the tenor sang quite loudly for such lyric music, but at little sacrifice of smooth linearity. Between the crushing thrust of Iago's "Credo" and the feathery wit of Falstaff's Act I honor monologue, Terfel lightened up with a caressing "O du mein holder Abendstern" from Tannhauser. His encores at the end of the evening included a mellow, touching Welsh song, in English.

Gallardo-Domas's "O mio babbino caro" (done very slowly, as if to make this cheery trifle sound important) and "Signore, ascolta!" showed off the soprano's specialty of high-flying phrases, arched with the airy luminescence of a rainbow. Margison too dipped into Turandot, his sound, ringing "Nessun dorma" prefaced by a few phrases from the Met Chorus; it was a shame not to include more of the scene's introduction. The chorus, onstage only for the second half of the program, had its moment of glory in "Va, pensiero" from the company's upcoming Nabucco. It also backed the big-voiced, solidly dramatic Radvanovsky, with Margison, in the "Miserere" under preparation for the new Il Trovatore.

Under James Levine, the orchestra gave polished readings of overtures to La Clemenza di Tito (bright, solemn), La Gazza Ladra (crisp, noisy), La Forza del Destino (tense, urgent) and Die Meistersinger (spacious, hefty), rounding out an impromptu evening that unfolded as smoothly as if it had been planned that way all along.

[] In opera, concerts, movies and television, Roberta Peters has become a mainstay of American culture. Fifty years almost to the minute after her debut at the Metropolitan Opera (twenty years old, with little experience, as Zerlina), Peters entered Alice Tully Hall to begin "the next fifty years," as she later put it, with an anniversary recital. That new beginning was not easy, but it shouldn't discourage her.

Peters wasn't in top form: the volume of her clear, strong, almost amusingly agile soprano was reduced by about 40 percent, and her singing was careful, with little of the sheer enjoyment that has made her such a pleasing recitalist. She'd planned a program many sopranos, let alone those still singing at seventy, would find daunting: the first half alone had two Mozart arias, one Handel, two Strauss songs, two Schuberts (David Schifrin was the clarinetist on "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen") and a scena from Don Pasquale.

At the end of "Der Hirt," Peters's throat began closing, and she just managed to finish it and the Donizetti aria. After intermission, she returned and confirmed she was suffering from a cold; ...