o ew’ge chat, suesse chat!
UPDATE:Â Be sure to join Commie-Winning Doyenne La Cieca for what is sure to be an historical webchat tonight beginning at 6:45 pm.
According to an announcement on the Met’s website, tonight’s performance of Tristan und Isolde featuring (together! for the first time!) Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt will be streamed live over RealPlayer. In honor of this eagerly-awaited partnership, La Cieca will host what will surely turn out to be the longest webchat in internet history, beginning at 6:45 PM and continuing until all our fingers go numb. Here’s a link to the chat, and remember to go to metopera.org at 7:00 to get the RealPlayer stream.
Lebrecht says Fleming, Kozena and von Otter don’t sing at Covent Garden? He hardly ever goes so how would he know? But it isn’t even true. Kozena hadn’t appeared at Covent Garden when Gelb’s appointment was in the offing, but so what? Is Kozena one of the great operatic divas of our time? I think not! Anyone who saw her bizarre Cenerentola at the Garden last Christmas could hardly think so. She was a nice Cherubino, if a bit Glyndebourne-sized, at the Met a few seasons ago, tho.
Giaco: by clicking on the ad here on the site, you automatically “inform” amazon and parterre receives a commission. And perhaps this is as good a time as any to repeat that if you order other items during the same amazon session (even if they are not advertised here on the site) La Cieca will receive a commission for those as well.
Regina – agreed, and at the same time, how often do Kozena and Von Otter (these days) appear at the Met? Bizarre trio he fixated upon.
Kozena has yet to impress me in opera but she did impress me in recital. I am actually really looking forward to hearing Kozena as Melisande at the Met in a few years time. Von Otter is pushing fifty and younger things are singing her repertoire. Jennifer Larmore has the same problem. Susan Graham is singing a few heavier roles like Didon which may put off facing the same problem in five or six years. Garanca and DiDonato seem to be the new hot mezzos with Isabel Leonard snapping at their heels. Let me put in a good word for Kate Lindsey though she is not a “star”.
May I remind you all that the Julie Taymor “Flute” was a Volpe project from start to finish premiered before Gelb was even hired? Same with the superb “Rodelinda” production by Stephen Wadsworth. There was the usual ratio of flops to successes in new productions but I don’t think that his track record was that shabby. I liked a lot of what I saw and heard during Volpe’s regime. A lot I didn’t like – his retaining Pavarotti way past his sell-by date. The whole “two tenors” fixation with no new idea on the horizon when those gentlemen eventually had to flee the scene. Putting singers like Ruth Ann Swenson and Frank Lopardo in the same parts season after season making the loss of vocal freshness even more evident.
The “Cellini” did do well at the box office with people looking for novelty. Though I hated the production by Serban I liked the music. The “Doktor Faustus” was like “Moses und Aron” a non-commercial project to add intellectual prestige to the season – like “Moses und Aron”.
One problem that Billingshurst, Friend et al. have is that they aren’t lining up enough young talent for the day when Gheorghiu, Dessay, Fleming and Mattila fade. I suspect that Schanewilms, Westbroek and Anja Kampe haven’t been hired because the thinking is “we have Voigt and Mattila and they are doing fine, we don’t need them”. Meanwhile this season I found disturbing signs of hollowness and strain in both Voigt and Mattila highly touted and HD transmitted assumptions of Isolde and Manon Lescaut. For neither was it a great moment in their Met career.
In five years they will really need new stars and aside from Netrebko, the likely candidates really aren’t singing at the Met because the Met hasn’t made it attractive for them financially or artistically.
I agree with you Gualtier; but for that Gelb needs an experienced crew, which he does not have; the new “boy”, Jonatann is training, is a joke. You don’t get hired from High School to run the MET casting department! But Gelb is not looking in the right places and not willing to agree on any of his already many mistakes. Why are we still exposed to Juntwait and Burger? You need people who “breath Opera” in those exposed positions. But they don’t want knowledge there these days. Majority of their HR are people who know nothing about Opera. That way they can never argue with Gelb about it. They are always a lot of good new young people out there; but such people as Resnik aren’t anymore. You bet, they need people like Elaine Coelho in Vienna, who in her prime was able to sing Donna Anna Monday, Arabella Tuesday, Jerusalemme Wednesday, Tosca Thursday, Friday on a 4 hour notice prior to curtain call to LEARN (!!!) Freia in Rheingold (she really did for Nancy Gustafson), Saturday Fedora and Sunday Liu or Salome. (She was not my favorite singer, but does not every bigger house need such a valuable player? Who is it at the MET barn in any Fach today like that? I remember only Sereni covering every role). Bing was lucky having Resnik and others, who if with today’s Gelb’s PR machine would be MEGA stars! But that era is over and except 4-5 names we are only exposed to type casting and boredom.
It seems to me that Gelb is trying to replicate what record companies were doing, particularly during the 70s and 80s. A Kiri or a Jessye or whoever comes along and gets offered everything from Manon Lescaut to Carmen to Fidelio, whether it is wise for them or the composer or the public. Other, more possibly suitable singers, are left out in the rush to put the stars on stage and bums on seats.
No Grimgerde, that happens only to your Walkuren Ride, but unfortunatelly for you only from your computer. How about Gelb’s ” wise” decision by offering Netrebko Boheme, Puritani, Lucia, Onegin etc. IS THAT WISE FOR HER, THE COMPOSER OR THE PUBLIC as you said? By the way Kiri te Kanawa sung Carmen in her early days in New Zeland. Mr.Geld does not have good singers on the horizon (if we don’t count your hinny, Netrebko’s, Dessay’s and Damrau’s) and those stage bums get better hourly union pay on the set, than putting theirs into the seats, replacing you.