I could sing Reimann’s Regan *tomorrow*– it’s a question of shrieking and screaming like a banshee.

They always do interesting stuff and who wants to see one more boring baroque opera unless they can get Nicholas Phan to do it tight white shorts?

As for the lament about the lack of wider-ranging 20th century fare, I’m sympathetic to all listeners who don’t get to see rarities that they’ve wanted to. I count myself lucky that I’ve gotten to see three Gluck operas in the past two years! The hard fact of life in running a company is that to some degree, you have to bow to the market (although that’s often taken too far/used as an excuse). To be fair, the commentator quibbled with in Mr. Dickie’s blog said:

I cannot conceal my slight disappointment that following the success of the Monteverdi cycle and other triumphs, COT has chosen not to continue to explore the 1600-1660 transitional period between the Renaissance and the Baroque. I was silently hoping for something by Cavalli or Cesti, or perhaps something a bit later, such as Lully or Charpentier.

As little as rare 20th century repertory is played, this stuff is pretty rare too–so ironically, you’re in much the same boat.

Mr. Friedman, I have zero sympathy for your Dido-esque lament about the lack of baroque opera. You’re complaining about a gap of two years *GASP* without “an authentic performance” from one company, well, I love serialist/12-tone operas, so your complaint is risible. Lyric doing “Lulu” this year is almost shocking, but apart from that and the upcoming Lincoln Center production of BA Zimmerman’s awesome “Die Soldaten”, it looks like to hear any of some of my favorite operas, I’ll again have to travel to Europe.

When opera companies in this country stage things like “Moses und Aron”, “The Mask of Orpheus”, “Bomarzo”, “Three Sisters”, “Lear”, “Der Rose von Steinfeld” and on and on with the frequency that they do the utterly ghastly (TO ME) baroque stuff, I’ll be more sympathetic.

Speaking of dumb, Mark, did you see this:

/sarcasm

in my post? You might want to look up hyperbole in a dictionary.

Well, none of the works Mortier announced for his first season were serial or even atonal. So, unless all 20th-century works outside the Barber-Menotti axis must always be considered “difficult” and “singer-hostile”, there was an awful lot of over-reaction to those facts.

Thank you, at least *you* got what I mocking. There was some rending of garments on this site about the fact that that first season didn’t contain any bel canto or baroque stuff, and people were moaning “Oh god, all that 20th century stuff, where are we going to hear Handel and Donizetti” etc. The fact that it was just the first season and that wasn’t going to be the policy going forward seems to have escaped a lot of people.

I have almost zero interest in most operas not by Wagner or Berlioz written before ca. 1890 and it’s always a struggle to hear performances of the stuff I like. But one freaking season that didn’t contain La Donna del Lago or Alcina and their ilk had people grasping for their pearls. Well, welcome to *my* world every season, for almost every company in the world.

Nice to hear from you dear!

Well, none of the works Mortier announced for his first season were serial or even atonal.
So, unless all 20th-century works outside the Barber-Menotti axis must always be considered “difficult” and “singer-hostile”, there was an awful lot of over-reaction to those facts.

No one was over-reacting. Mortier has announced that his first season will consist solely of 20th century works. So people were reacting to facts.

(just for the record, the announcement of the upcoming un-season is by most accounts a month overdue.)