parterre box

95 comments

• 81
  operadent says:

  March 3, 2009 at 8:45 PM

  A production such as this insults the composer, the musicians/singers and the audience to such a degree that a vociferous response is not only valid but many ways necessary.
  Our wallets were violated and our intellegence was called into question. Not to express outrage would run against our feelings and need to express our displeasure. Sitting on our hands would have been unthinkable and unhealthy.
  In short, we booed the bastards!
• 82
  operadent says:

  March 3, 2009 at 8:49 PM

  In re. #80 (Cassandra) – maybe Wagner – but, then again, wait for the new Ring. That could be a meltdown.
• 83
  Doris Godunov says:

  March 3, 2009 at 10:36 PM

  Dears, you need to practice your booing – rather underwhelming. If you are going to do it, do it properly. Maybe voice lessons and projection would help. I thought you vulgar Americans would trump us decadent Europeans, but this was nothing on the overwhelming torrent of disapproval that greeted the production team for Anna Vriebrock’s recent Paris ‘Ariane et Barbe Bleue’.

  Give it some welly, you big sissies.
• 84
  wotan_in_inman says:

  March 3, 2009 at 10:50 PM

  Cassandra @60.

  WAGNER ! ! ! ARE YOU SIRIUS !! I MEAN SERIOUS ! ! ! !

  Did you live through the recent spate of Tristshit und Ioldpoop?

  Until the last run of Don Giovanni, I would have said the Met is still a good Mozart house. Rossini? Yes. Puccini is on-and-off.

  What makes me scream in anguish is that I can’t see that The Met is in any worse shape than any other international house. Aida is an endangered specie. Another Regie Nabucco set in an opium den.

  Hey, La Sonnambula set in a Catholic High School. That would work. Sort of “Grease” without the attitude. Yeah.

  Sorry, I digress.
• 85
  wotan_in_inman says:

  March 3, 2009 at 10:58 PM

  Who adjusted my meds when I wasn’t looking. I meant Operadent at #82.

  I’ll be sulking in the powder room.

  Or pouting int he sulker room.

  One or the other, but I’ll be doing it.
• 86
  ortrud jones says:

  March 4, 2009 at 12:54 AM

  I wouldn’t count on the Met being a good Wagner house with the horrid Lisa Gasteen singing Brunnhilde. Of course there’s more to a Ring Cycle than Brunny, but still, she can’t sing anything above a G….
• 87
  Nerva Nelli says:

  March 4, 2009 at 1:26 AM

  Keith MC confessed:

  “Yawn! Reactionary American audiences. Zzzzzzzzz”

  Well, go sleep the sleep of the ill-informed. The staging was not “daring”– it was inept and cheap and lacked internal logic. Met audiences will cheer updated productions **if they work**: for example the brilliant LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK and more recently SALOME.

  Anyone who sees this controversy as being about artistic daring in the face of conservatitism is a patsy of Gelb’s publicity machine.
• 88
  Famous Quickly says:

  March 4, 2009 at 6:45 AM

  I could boo Mary Zimmerman *tomorrow*: it’s a question of also booing that narcissistic French baggage who fancies herself too hip and ironic to perform Romantic rep as written.
• 89
  Lindoro Almaviva says:

  March 4, 2009 at 9:01 AM

  Quickly, I’m 100% with you.
• 90
  harry says:

  March 4, 2009 at 11:01 AM

  For those that scream about the Met being too traditionalist, what are they trying to say? I always thought the word firstly in regard to Opera, meant the seeking of consistent high quality standards.

  That is, not allow a lurch into what people could expect to see at a local high school production with all the usual risible faults and flaws plainly on show.
  Where people politely tell each other untruthfully of course, that everybody had a fun night with a forced smile There, one is expected to forgive if some ‘little Ms Nattie’ screams a few notes and her tits off key, the direction is ratty because Ms Zimmer the drama teacher did a lousy job, like last time she handled things as well. Well next time everybody will have the new excuse “Its Regie, didn’t you know!” And some pretentious thing probably nicknamed the Queen of Maria Theresa Chandelieria so wanting to SUCH a fan of Regie because they believe it to be hip will exclaim “Yes, I know and is’nt it SOOOO outrageous opps, too I nearly always wet myself!”
• 91
  jatm2063 says:

  March 4, 2009 at 9:38 PM

  Who else noticed that many of the other videos on this list of 15 provided to us by our doyenne are of gigantic muscleboys?
• 92
  wenarto says:

  March 5, 2009 at 4:18 AM

  OK, whatever it is, just boo my Sonnambula

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkcrkATqvWA&FMT=18
• 93
  operaaficionado says:

  March 5, 2009 at 10:12 PM

  You New Yorkers just don’t get ‘real’ theatre. Too many boring Broadway productions have watered down your sense of theatrical adventure not to mention intelligence. Too many of NYC’s great dramatic and musical productions have started in Chicago. Chicagoans know the Windy City is the real ‘theatre’ town, home to the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Lookingglass, Victory Gardens, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and numerous other great theatre companies. Mary Z is brilliant! Send her back to us with Dan, Mara and TJ! Love them all!
• 94
  Alto says:

  March 6, 2009 at 3:08 AM

  Are you under the impression, R 93, that those Broadway sillinesses are put on for New Yorkers? No, they are mostly for the tourists — including the visiting Chicagoans.
• 95
  ilpenedelmiocor says:

  March 8, 2009 at 1:41 AM

  Re: #72

  “At the end of the dress rehersal of C et M at CG, the audience applauded Netrebko and Garanca for 15 minutes, rather unusual for the reserved and cool British! Nebs is not that bad after all!”

  Music criticism via applause meter.

  Did she actually manage to get through an entire production without ever going off pitch? I would applaud that vociferously as well.