Les Papotages d’Hoffmann
Here’s the place for all your chatting needs, cher public, during tonight’s broadcast of Les Contes d’Hoffmann from the Met.
The official chat begins at 7:45 pm for an 8:00 curtain, and La Cieca invites Twitters and whatever other technological frontrunners to contribute their opinions and dish.
Following this performance with a score is going to be difficult, as the Met uses a mix-and-match edition, but if you’re interested, bad old Choudens can be found here.
None of the Act III singing seems very interesting to me;
what a case of the wobbles both those Barcarolle girls
had — that famous number went for very little; Levine
did not help either; the Diamant was almost an
embarrassment. Not a role for Mr Held? Surely he
could have ended with the F.
The tenor sounding very pressed. Well, it’s opening
night; I do feel the tenor has this role in his voice with
lots more vocal work with it. Perfunctory applause. I
think if I’d been in the house I would have left by
now to get home early.
Sanford Diamant is not “fiendlishly high” in the lower
key; both keys are used — it seemed a bit low for
Held and he took no chances at the end, but I found
him uninteresting in it tonight.
Gosh, one forgets what a “series of numbers” this opera is.
Ho hum.
I don’t know it in the lower key, so to me it’s fiendishly high.
i was at the dress-Calleja was ill and had to leave after act 1. He still seems under the weather
I liked the production. Levine’s tempi were quite subdued.
The chorus sounded very good at teh dress and tonight. What a great improvement since Palumbo took over.
a young tenor named david pomeroy took over from calleja at teh dress. He was very good. Anyone know much about him??
The only thing I know about new singers is what I hear on youtube, and David Pomeroy is not there.
Leonard Warren always did the four villains…I can still his two (2) high G-sharps in the aria.
Actually, Warren never sang any of these roles at the Met or San Francisco.
Did you hear him do the parts somewhere else, or are you thinking of Tibbett, or are you just assuming that he sang the villains on the basis of his recording of “Scintille, diamant”?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that particular ending? Where did it come from and who found it? Are those some of the “lost” pages that Offenbach’s heirs were wrapping dead fish in? I’m sure I read that story somewhere. I liked the performance. I liked the tenor. A week without Will and Margaret?–how will we live?
http://www.davidpomeroy.com
I think tonight’s performance was one of the Met’s best this season. Cast changes didn’t make any diffrence, and the orchestra and chorus were tops. Calleja’s diction for a non-French born was good, and it reminded me of Gedda’s. Calleja’s timbre is very interesting, and it moved back to the 40s and 50s; something between Bjorling and Tagliavini. Levine’s physicality may be still restricted due to his recent back surgery that can explain the slow tempo and dragging of the score.
Hearing Calleja tonight brought back memories of the first time I heard Carreras, as a high school kid in 1981. The performance was (my first) Boheme, on a January Saturday afternoon in 1981, with Stratas and Scotto in a TV broadcast available on DVD. I had no idea walking in (given my relative youth) who Carreras was or whether I’d like Boheme, but I was stunned by the performance. Tonight, 28 years and easily 400+ Met performances later, I heard a magnificent new (to me at least) tenor at the Met and I am thankful for it. Other than a handful of early-life Kraus, Gedda Vickers and Pavarotti peformances, by and large for 28+ years Domingo was the only tenor I could count as great on the Met’s stage. This guy tonight had a beautiful, sweet, large voice, and he looked quite fine. I hope he manages his career such that he is around and able to sing for a very long time.
Others in the performance tonight were wonderful also,…..but in my opinion this was Callejs’s