Please, Louise
My post about Nielsen’s Maskarade outraged only a few of you, and inspired a passionate discussion about what works we’d like to see at the New New Met. (Thank you, Hans Lick, for your very complete wish list!)
You are each now invited to vote for your three most longed-for revivals or premieres at the Met.
Rules after the jump.
- Only three operas! In no particular order.
- Support your argument, if you wish, but be brief! (A couple of sentences for each is fine.)
- The work must be have never been performed at the Met, or not performed since 1950, or must be Weber’s Der Freischütz.
The operas receiving the most votes will be tallied and announced here.
There are no prizes.
Now get to work!
(Photo: Friedrich Schorr as Schwanda der Dudelsackpfeifer)
Having gone to a splendidly cast Louise in SF in 1999 (Fleming in a congenial role, Ramey, Palmer…may have been Hadley, don’t remember) I’m going to side with the folks who say it just hasn’t aged into something readily enjoyable at this particular moment in history. I remember it as having longeurs on top of longeurs. And then Depuis le Jour. And then a final course of longeurs.
Oh the choices, the choices.
1. Massenet – Griselidis. Never performed with a few real gems.
2. Verdi – Don Carlos. Always loved it in French, never seen it.
3. Philidor – Tom Jones. The novel is wonderful, may as well see it..
I think so far Philidor’s Tom Jones is winning the “most obscure” race (though there’s a lot of competition)
Remember folks, we have to sell this to Mr Gelb!!
*grins* Seeing as my thought process getting to tom jones went past both Les Dragons de Villars, and Les Cloches de Corneville, it coulda been worse.
Hell, if I could’ve come up with a third opera with a major role for a dancer, I would’ve suggested a set of that third, Muette de Portici and La Camargo (lecoq)….
Rimsky’s ‘Mlada’ – the title role is for a dancer, and there’s a great campy cameo for Cleopatra as well – also a full opera company piled on top.
I can think of some so-called leading sopranos who would do well to add the title role in Mlada to their repertoire.
@Queen amahelli – oo, awesome, thank you! I’ve got a major hole in my knowledge when it comes to the Russians.
@Monty – *cackle* Laughing this hard is a great way to start the day..
fuzzy chris – you’ll love Mlada: it’s not staged very often as there is a scene of Divination by Horses, requiring a group of white ones and a group of black ones, a witches sabbath on a mountain, which then reveals Cleopatra’s court, and a full scale inundation a la Gotterdammerung at the end – and it requires a dramatic soprano with a stonking top C sharp and a tenor with a top C. Believe it or not there is a DVD available from the Bolshoi, and it may be on youtube – It’s bonkers!
1. Ok, well let me give a vote for Azerbaijani composer Uzeir Hajibeyov’s last opera “Koroghlu” (1937) – a legendary, historical epic. Borrowing on the passionate language of traditional Azeri mugam, I like to describe Hajibeyov’s operas as Borodin on steroids. This might make for some nice cultural outreach for the Met, and they could rake in some Azerbaijani oil money. Bonus: the first lady of Azerbaijan looks like a really evil version of Audrey Hepburn.
Some links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kydP4e6xS3Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvjw3GJdzc8&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HLEJJwFIH8&feature=relatedfeature=related
2. Boieldieu – La Dame Blanche
3. Rossini – Guillaume Tell
I posted some suggestions yesterday but here are my votes. Please Mr Gelb!!!
1. Saint François d’Assise
Because it’s Met debut is long overdue…
2. Le Coq d’Or (with Julie Taymor directing)
Because it would be a dream come true… (I’d fly from Australia to see it, because there is no hope of it being done here, no matter how hard I beg…)
3. Der Vampyr
Because it would be fun to see some of the campy Met stars in something really campy…
1. SNORE
2. Taymor is a great idea!!!!
3. You don’t get enough of that already??
Saw Coq d’Or at the Chatelet. It was beautiful! The production was by a Japanese director, I believe.
It was supposed to be revived in San fran in this production, but sadly it was cut.
I think Taymor would do a brilliant job of it.
Who will sing the Astronomer??? (Eb for the tenor…)
The Coq d’Or at Chatelet was the Mariinsky production directed by Ennosuke Ichikawa, a kabuki actor…
No-one has mentioned Debussy’s “Le martyre de Saint Sébastien”. I have always wanted to know what it would look like on stage…
Well, it isn’t an opera really–just some very elaborate incidental music to a very ornate verse play. You might as well ask the Met to mount Mendelssohn’s music for A midsummer night’s dream…
I’m coming to this late, and haven’t read beyond the 10th suggestion, but here are the 3 I’d like to see, given the squirrel’s rules:
1. La donna del lago
2. Lucrezia Borgia (but I ask, please, not with Fleming)
3. Powder Her Face
If Powder Her Face proves to be too much of a chamber piece for a house of the Met’s size, then I substitute Cunning Little Vixen in its place.
Let me explain about my special request for Lucrezia Borgia. Most of you know that I’m not a Fleming hater. In fact, I’m currently enjoying her singing in Herodiade. But the two times she sang this role — at WNO and at La Scala — the reviews were mixed at best.
Why Powder Her Face? I know very little about this work, but I really like Adès’ music. So I’m willing to give it a try.
She actually sang the role in more than 2 productions. She also sang it at Carnegie Hall in 2000. You really have to hear it for yourself. I know that someone people still think that critics and reviewers are still relevant, but not me.
Powder Her Face? What would the patrons think about an opera which has a blowjob as its main claim to fame?
We had a fine production of PHF in Boston several years ago and it made a very good impression. Not everybody’s cup of tea musically or dramatically, perhaps, but a genuine opera, very good theater, a work of real stature. There’s much more to it than just a blowjob.
but it is a tiny chamber opera – 4 singers and about 15 instruments – how big can a blowjob be to be enjoyed by 3800 people in the Met?
Having heard a few things by Ades, I’m really not sure how much there is to any of them.
If it features a blowjob, it could make a nice pairing with Bondy’s Tosca. The Met could assemble a themed package for subscribers called “BJs Throughout the Ages” and include all the productions in its repertory that have a blowjob on stage. Or they could name the series after the GD who used to help the ushers get off. And imagine the special cocktail the bartenders would serve …
Since Powder Her Face is scored for such a small ensemble, I throw my vote to Cunning Little Vixen.
Cruz,is that Cunning or Cumming? (I got in there before Sanford.)
Does the idea that chamber-music effects cannot be adequately presented in the Met stand up? Last season we had a piano recital there, after all, and it was marvelous. I have seen Powder Her Face –at BAM — and have the recording. It’s not my favorite work, but it’s a fine piece and might be a real relief at the Met if well-presented.
In an ideal world, one would lead to the other.
Alto, I leave it to the New Yorkers here to weigh in on chamber pieces in the Met. Adès composed PHF for a small venue because, I’ve read, limited financial resources. Maybe he could enlarge (revise) the music for the Met’s orchestra.
Yikes, I didn’t say anything about Donna del Lago. I’ve heard DiDonato sing selections from this in concert and I just about [arrived] in my pants. I would love to hear and see her in the entire work. I’m confident that she would be able to act as well as sing whatever the role demands.
Cruz, do we need to have a lesson in how to properly conjugate the verb “to cum”? {arrived} is not proper english.
I’m cumming
I have cum
I came
I will be cumming again shortly
I want to cum again
I faked my cum shot
I’m too high to cum
1. Rimsky’s “Christmas Eve”
A delightful counterpart to Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki premiering in London this month. Tuneful Slavic fantasy.
2. Moniuszko’s “Halka”
3. Marchetti’s Ruy Blas
I can’t believe that’s two “Halka” votes!
is Valery Gergiev still principal guest conductor at the Met? no? Isn’t it amazing that they have not done Coq d’Or or Prince Igor or Ruslan and Ludmila.
SQUIRREL! Check the Archives. They’ve done Ruslan and Lyudmila and Prince Igor at the Met with the touring Kirov; seen ‘em both…Ruslan with a young Netrebko.
That was sometime in the last decade, not ancient history, so it shouldn’t be hard.
Le Coq d’Or was, of course, the property of La Sills at NYCO in the early seventies, when you were still in the squirrel nest, chewing on your baby acorns. Don’t think the Met could have competed with that! It had a great success, so lots of old people have a recollection of it — it toured to L.A., as well.
I don’t know if Gergiev still holds that title. Certainly his non Russian work at the Met has been very uneven.
Gergiev did bring the Kirov/MT to the Met with both Prince Igor and Ruslan about 12 years ago. Ruslan is a wonderful fantasy piece and the MT did just a wonderful job of it.
The Prince Igor was more problematic , there is often a problem about which music to use and what order to use it in with this piece but I love it just the same.
ATTENTION ALL DEBUSSY LOVERS! TOMORROW NIGHT at Florence Gould Hall, l’Opera Francais de New York will present Debussy’s weirdness masquerading as opera, i.e., “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Devil in the Belfry” — for those of you coming down off the high of an evening with Aprile, this may be the bromide you are looking for. Or not.
In whatever case, it is more opera weirdness than you’re liable to ever see very soon at the Metropolitan Opera, House of the Dead excepted. You can surely find out more by going to the Alliance Francaise site, I think http://www.fiaf.com or something to that effect.
The ‘Usher’, I believe it is, will be an edition of the extant scraps, worked out by the eminent Carolyn Abbate, so it’s gonna be as good as it gets, as the saying goes.
Last year the Robert Orledge version of Usher was done in Amsterdam with the excellent Henk Neven. A great success.
Living up to my name, I would vote:
1. Rossini – Otello
2. Donizetti – I Capuleti e i Montechi
3. Rossini – La Gazza Ladra