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.
Here’s a question from someone who is definitely not in the business: how much of the current season is Volpe, not Gelb? Weren’t the casting decisions for this year made under Volpe? What about next season? I’m not asking as a matter of Volpe vs. Gelb, but just as a factual matter. Isn’t the Met still in the nachtleben of Gelb in terms of current production?
Gelb cancelled every single contract he did not like, as late as beginning of the 2007-2008 season. Not the scheduled titles, but singer contracts. So all the folks you hear since than are at least 80% his current ideas.
I don’t think it’s that clear-cut. He certainly bought out some contracts…but there’s a large grey area of casting decisions he would probably not have made but that he could live with. Remember, buying out contracts is costly and I don’t think it would have been financially viable to cancel ALL the contracts he didn’t like.
ANOTHER ISSUE: I believe the singer under contract does have some legal rights here…I heard a couple of singers refused the buy-out and threatened to sue, so Gelb backed off…anyone know about this?? I believe it’s one of the reasons Gelb hates Ms. Swenson. He wanted Fleming to sing all the TRAVIATAS this season but Ms. Swenson would only agree to give up the ones in the fall.
It’s too hard to figure out about next season…one can safely say it’s a mix of GELB & VOLPE.
Things I know: DOCTOR ATOMIC, FAUST and RONDINE are GELB projects. He inserted the return of ORFEO with Blythe after it sold out it’s original run. He hired EWA PODLES over the objections of Billinghurst and Friend. He planned the TRISTAN with Barenboim, so I guees that’s his casting, though it’s probably safe to say it’s Barenboim’s casting since they are all singers he has done TRISTAN with before. Obviously DAMRAU in Lucia is his casting. He hired Ozawa for Pique Dame next season and the return of the Berlioz Faust the season after. He planned the MADAMA BUTTERFLY revival which will be moviecast and then released as a DVD AND I know for a fact he wanted Pat Racette to do it after her success in the role this year but MINGHELLA would only agree to the original cast. He talked Mattila into coming back to do SALOME and finally get a DVD out there. I guess she refused to authorize the release of the original version so CHANGES will be made in the staging. That’s all I know for sure…
Are people really missing the “good old Volpe” days? Lest we forget that every production he dabbled in was a disaster – Trovatore anyone? His artistic vision consisited of asking – what’s the budget? Then showing up for the dress rehearsal and blowing a gasket because he was gobsmacked by the mediorce or modernist crap that passed as “new productions” during his reign. There were some real successes during his tenure, but these were Levine orchestrated (Moses und Aron, Wozzeck, etc.) How many Lucias did he go through? Two? And the second was worst than the first. Is greatest accomplishment was landing that job with Guiliani Partners and divorcing himself of the Vilar scandal. At least Gelb has 10 or 15 “stars” in his roster. Volpe’s consisted of 3 – Pavoratti, Domingo & Fleming. He also had a bad habit of pissing off big European names by treating them indifferently or giving the C-cast performances with no p.r. attached to some pretty important Met debuts. I know I am going to get A LOT of fact for this, but please also remember that he gave us Giergev and his sloppy Verdi conducting. Honestly people.
I agree. I’ve said it before, VOLPE’s knowledge of opera ended at the MET scene shop door. And he kept using 9/11 as an excuse for declining attendance years after the fact, even though all the other city cultural institutions had bounced back. CLUE-LESS. What about how his high-handed dealings with Chevron-Texaco made it all-too-easy for them to drop their radio sponsorship???
But being GENERAL MANAGER of the MET is one of those jobs everyone thinks they can do better. It doesn’t matter what Gelb does, there’ll be plenty of complaining and gnashing of teeth. I, myself, think he’s doing a great job.
mariod, do you have any idea what changes Mattila wants in the staging of Salome? I’m curious to know the kinds of issues she would use her clout for.
as for the end of the Volpe era, I am delighted! Whether Gelb can “save” the Met or not, Volpe already had the coffin in the ground, and was bulldozing the dirt into the grave.
I am not crazy about all the marketing-for-marketing’s-sake that Gelb has brought with him, but the fact is that it is the 21st century now. Although the most in-demand repertoire is from other eras, the productions and the casts don’t need to be.
The Met is a giant not-for-profit. It’s not all about art. Art is what you do after you raise the money. The ends Gelb is serving are not just audience satisfaction, they are also about keeping the donors writing checks by keeping them engaged. A significant amount of the Met’s budget comes from big donations, not just ticket sales. Volpe really wasn’t doing anything to keep the big donor funding streams going, except to offer them very traditional packaging for the opera. Like it or not, Gelb knows that to keep the donors engaged for any sustained period of time, he will need to make them feel like they are funding something more than business-as-usual.
Going back to the Joe era, just how successful critically were the productions of Busoni’s Faustus, and Ben. Cellini? I could not get through the breadcasts of either one of them, and have not read anything in Parterre about either of them?
La Cieca: I just ordered the “Salome” from nthe display here on your site. Should I have made some notation on the Amazon order so you’d receive financial credit? This is a slick way of advertising, ordering, and, I presume, helping under-writing your site.
The only music I know from Benvenuto Cellini are the Roman Carnival overture and an aria that I remember Christianne Eda-Pierre singing. But I love Berlioz. However, I have another suggestion for rare operas for the Met. Le Roi Malgre Lui, by Chabrier. Barbara Hendricks did a really terrific recording of it. I know the libretto is a problem, but lots of operas are performed whose libretti are problems. And the music is gorgeous.
I wish they’d do the Kurt Weill Die Buergschaft…I’d probably be the only one to go see it, but I love the music and would love to see it staged.