No word from Carmencita
That invited audience for last night’s dress rehearsal of Carmen at the Met must still be under house arrest, for nary a peep has reached the ear of your doyenne.
On the bright side, there was a snippet of video smuggled out of a rehearsal of the upcoming Attila, and La Cieca is happy to share it with you.
The MET should be so lucky ever to produce something so engrossing, so spectacular and true to the composer’s intentions as that wonderful video.
It must be the production borrowed from Branson.
Pretty funny, Cieca. And I LOVE that last note! Something about those acuti….
But what is it about scantily clad women that gets people going? Ho Hum! Now if that lead singer had on about a fourth of his costume….that would be a different matter.
what do y’all think of Urmana’s upcoming Odabella? thoughts? pre-verdicts? fears? hopes? medical conditions?
Last night being a dress rehearsal, and the least polished such event I have seen in a long time, no detailed analysis of the performance makes any sense. I don’t see how it can be much improved by Thursday night. The physical production itself is not impressive, and uses the revolving stage much the way the current Trovatore does, to little effect – in Act one it confuses the action, and the cigarette girls emerge from a cistern like opening in the middle of the stage. In Act two the tavern is plunked down among the remnants of the act one set, which is gathered toward the back of the stage. Act 3 is an efficient evocation of the mountain pass. Act 4 returns us to the revolving stage, with the outside of the arena action cramped toward the front of the stage, apparently so that the revolution can reveal the final tableau, showing the inside of the arena, with Escamillo presiding over the corpse of a huge and stylized bull (think Elektra’s horse with horns), and Jose and the corpse of Carmen now off to the side. Symbolism, I guess. And I must mention Carmen’s dress in Act 4, which is black and volumnious, with the same red stripe down the front that we have been looking at on the curtain since the beginning. Think Scarlett O’Hara as I did, and it becomes too ridiculous to have any good effect. Besides which it is very cumbersome for the artist. The direction and the musical performance were not notable, but the cast may come together. What all this mainly said to me was that as ever without a performance on the stage, no production means anything. The dancing, and the choreography of Christopher Wheeldon supplied the only polished factor.
“…without a performance on the stage, no production means anything”
Amen to that sentiment!
Simply marvelous video. Timed perfectly. La Cieca is fiendishly clever — her infinite variety never ceases to amaze.
ROFLMAO and all that jazz. Thanks for the entertaining moments. You do have a knack for this sort of implied cluster fuck.
Simon Cowell always praises a contestant who takes an old song and makes it contemporary. That’s what the videographer did here. Bravo!!!
Does this mean we get to start a new Regie Quiz subgenre?–”If you were told this is a new production of (Insert Composer and Opera Title), would you believe it or not?” I wanted to believe this one, and I guess I did….for about 3 seconds. Thanks for the much-needed laugh!
Hey, I think that Disco Attila (which is hilarious, btw) is just as believable as the Bumblebee Nabucco (remember that one?). Only the Attila is more polished.
“Not only was Barbara Cook in the house, but Christine Baranski, Alan Richtman, Placido Domingo, Netrebko,and hubby Erwin Scrott, Debbie Voight, Stephanie Blythe! It was more star studded than opening night! The production is fabulous! Whether Alagna will go on New Years Eve is questionable. He only sang the first half due to a cold. His cover who was EXCELLENT sang the second half off stage while Alagna lip synched. The final visual is PERFECT!
I wish I was going again!”
Above posted on All That Chat at
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/allthatchat/d.php?id=1809286
OK, so what do All Those Chatterers they know about opera? We’ll soon find out…
Is Thursday’s Carmen being shown live on PBS in NYC? Because it isn’t here.
BTW, Voigt is misspelled in the All That Chat “Carmen” post; that’ll cause some Parterre Box posters’s hair to curl. And Alan Richtman?? I guess he means Alan Rickman.
As for PBS, we’ll probably have to wait ’til the tape of the Jan 16 HD simulcast wends it’s way to the tube.
Assuming the prima is audio streamed, hopefully La C and/or Bassoprofundo will open a chat space.
Oh and he misspells Erwin’s last name as Scrott. Guess it could have been worse…
Dear Jay:
I hope you have sex in the coming year!
If you are going to correct spellings around here, perhaps you would care to write “its” correctly in the phrase, “wends its way”.
Cheers!