where will the elite meet?
Now that single tickets are available for purchase by Met season subcribers, and as the NYCO continues to dribble out details about casting, it’s time for La Cieca to start organizing her social diary for the opening of “The Season.” Where will Le Tout New-York be tooting this time around, cher public? Let La Cieca know in the poll after the jump.
Please note that you may vote for more than one “must see” operatic experience — if you can find any in the following list.
I am most looking forward to Turandot with LISE LINDSTROM!!!!!!! She is finally making her Met debut and will put the other one to shame. HA! As wonderful as it was to hear Domingo last season even in transposition, I will never recover from that Adriana butchering as long as I live.
I have, as always, gotten tickets to all the MET’s new productions. I see them the first season that they’re new because for good or ill, I want to see the directors’ and designers’ work while it’s fresh, before other hands tweak and adjust it and begin to dilute the intended original experience.
My personal hot tickets are Esther and House of the Dead, two modern works I have not yet seen on a stage or, in Esther’s case, heard a note of. My interest in and passion for opera began when I was a child and very quickly encompassed everything from Monteverdi to what was written last week. God, how I love the stuff!
Where is “Attila” on this list. One of Verdi’s most rousing operas. The debut of a major conductor. A cast who looks on paper able to handle this “any thing you can do i can do better” work
I expect it will be like the first “Frau’s,” a real sleeper
Cheers
Odabella
“I will say that he will also replace that Boheme soon and that will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for many.”
Don’t worry: they still have the Christmas show at Radio City.
I would trade all of Puccini for Gotterdammerung,
Act II, especially if H. Behrens were singing B.
I’m not a fan of the Zefferlli Tosca, so I welcome any changes. What have we heard about the new production?
Gelb has publicly stated that he has no plans to get rid of Boheme or Turandot, hasn’t he? Stop gripping.
I will miss Rosenkavalier if/when it is replaced. I don’t think it needs replacing. We’ll see after January.
My big must-sees are Elektra and Hoffmann. Bart Sher is a genius and can do no wrong in my eyes, and if the cast turns out to be good, this could be a highlight of the season. It’ll probably be a divisive production, as his Barbiere was, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. Meanwhile, Elektra looks perfectly cast and should be absolutely fantastic.
See, what La Cieca doesn’t get here about the Zeffirelli “Boheme” is that people have had hundreds and hundreds of opportunities to see it over almost three decades now, practically every season. It’s been filmed twice.
Is there some symbolic quality here that trumps the artistic, some arch-conservative spirit that equates FZ’s frippery to the good old days when aristocrats ruled the earth? In that case, why not have the Zef make a Met comeback directing a new production of “Ghosts of Versailles?” Talk about your perfect match of content with treatment!
FZ’s “Tosca” was always a crashing bore with only two moments passing muster: the gazillion-dollar procession to the altar finishing Act 1 (what the Vatican could do if they had money) and the use of the elevator stage to reveal Cavaradossi’s cell in the bowels of the Castel Sant’Angelo. The first of these effects is just that, an effect, without any real connection to the meaning of the piece — really if anything, it’s about gold-plated 1980s “more is more” New York.
The elevator actually is a great idea though it lasted only the first season since Pavarotti couldn’t climb the stairs. (Curiously, nobody at the Met seemed to think that this massive change in the staging was worthy complaining about, but, after all, the color of a prima donna’s wig is so much easier to throw a hissy fit over.)
Could someone please explain to me why there is so much (to my mind) necrophilic passion for these Zeffirelli productions?
Cara Cieca (#17) – For me, the Boheme and Tosca (Turandot to some degree too) are comfort food. They are the ideal visual aesthetic I want for these pieces, ever since I was a princess reading my Victor Book of Opera, and there are very few productions around of which I can say this. OK, the stagings aren’t the most sophisticated – I know we are supposed to crave rigorous Regie (and I do appreciate that too). But there are days when I don’t want to think and just want to wallow in my double fudge chocolate ice cream. These productions allow me that pleasure, and the Boheme even more, as I usually am moved no matter how routine the performance in those big sets.
dear and esteemed cieca, a little thing you left out.
the intentions of the guy who wrote it. Puccini included in all his operas distinct stage directions. who alive should argue with him what brought us?
boring? hardly. people come for escape, to travel, to be in far off romantic lands, to see empire gowns somewhere other than the film the titantic. Opulence and respect for the composers wishes.
Jertiza did well in time period correct, callas THRIVED, Magda incinerated the auditorium in period correct, why kill FZ because he follows the composers wishes magnified for a house of 4000? They always sell well, which in this day is important.
of course they have to distract with smoke and mirrors now. modern day, poor man’s version of Jeritiza, not without a somewhat limited but available charm coming from Matila, they suddenly have to RETHINK this masterpiece. To fit what? Limited vocality? A bored general manager?
by all means germanize the italian rep. it lives on despite their best attempts to kill it. That house, national and international standing should have both.
with just a hint of petite malice but always respect dear hostess.
did Puccini intend for his operas to be staged by Zeffirelli? Did he intend for Cafe Momus to be masked by coat racks, only to be whisked away mid-scene? Did he intend for not one, but two mid-scene scenery changes in Tosca, Act III? Did he intend for Turandot‘s palace square to have plain bridges in Act II, only to acquire pagoda-like structures in Act III?
The thing that galls me about these Zeffirelli productions is not how “traditional” they are, but how willing they are to sacrifice “authorial intention” to gaudy scenic effect.