Also…”Sher can’t read music and doesn’t speak Italian”
Oh great. And he thinks it’s “weird and strange”. Even better. Opera truly is finished when those producing it don’t even have faith in it ala gelb’s disclaimer of sonnambula as “silly”.

More than fifty years ago Callas lost a lot of weight precisely because she wanted to be believable onstage. Nilsson, Sutherland, Tebaldi, Steber, Amara, Price, Horne, Rysanek, et al all worked at losing weight and looking their best. And they all worked to improve their dramatic abilities.

Even earlier the likes of Pons, Sayao, Stevens, Moore and others were well known for their looks and stage presence. And for every Melchior, Milanov, or Caballe of the past, we now have Botha, Eaglen, or Brewer.

Dramatically exciting productions were also known and appreciated in decades past. At the Met, Don Carlo, Cosi, Carmen, Wozzeck were as sensational in their time as FTHOD is nowadays. An early 1950′s Faust with Mefistofele in top hat was as controversial as Tosca was a couple of months ago.

The world didn’t start with the arrival of Fleming, Gelb and others.

The Times may be bad ( at least they have reviewers who attend performances) , but PBS is a disaster.

This is probably some of the last performances of his production. I will venture a guess that replacing this Rosenkavalier will be less traumatic to some than the Zefirelli Boheme.

The Met replaces its Zefirelli Tosca with another traditional production. Some people bitch because it is too traditional, some people bitch because it was not traditional enough, some bitch because it is not by zefirelli. So the Met has to make peace with the fact that the unifying theme of the new Tosca is the fact that people went looking for reasons to hate it, as opposed to love it.

Unfortunately, the met was in a no win situation no matter what, so how is it spin?