parterre box

95 comments

• operadent says:

  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!

  on March 3, 2009 at 8:45 PM
• operadent says:

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

  on March 3, 2009 at 8:49 PM
• Doris Godunov says:

  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.

  on March 3, 2009 at 10:36 PM
• wotan_in_inman says:

  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.

  on March 3, 2009 at 10:50 PM
• wotan_in_inman says:

  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.

  on March 3, 2009 at 10:58 PM
• ortrud jones says:

  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….

  on March 4, 2009 at 12:54 AM
• Nerva Nelli says:

  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.

  on March 4, 2009 at 1:26 AM
• Famous Quickly says:

  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.

  on March 4, 2009 at 6:45 AM
• Lindoro Almaviva says:

  Quickly, I’m 100% with you.

  on March 4, 2009 at 9:01 AM
• harry says:

  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!”

  on March 4, 2009 at 11:01 AM