Now just a simple little frock
Multiple-threat Isaac Mizrahi, like everyone else it seems, really wants to direct; and direct he shall for Opera Theater of St. Louis this summer, helming A Little Night Music. And designing the sets and costumes too. [Playbill]
Kind of dispiriting that for the sake of publicity this company will place a notably difficult show in the hands of an amateur. But “assistants” will cover up many of the difficulties and OTSL will get duly Tweeted about.
Oh well, at least they do everything in English.
This is taking his envy of Tom Ford too far. At least Ford had the guts to finance his film himself.
You just wait. He’s going to play Madame Armfeldt, too!
Just an aside:
Wilber’s Met Futures page has blown up with new information…Rolando is out for Travita in 2010(can’t really argue that Francesco Meli is a good repacement though)…and Dessay is in for 2011. And sweet heavens, Gunn is Billy Budd (legs clenched) in 2011.
Lots of interesting new goodies after the jump.
http://balconybox.blogspot.com/2008/06/met-futures-page.html
Amazing that Mr, Matthew Epstein has been able to bamboozle them into thinking of putting Christine Schaefer in a new RIGOLETTO. Talk about fraudulent casting…
Christine Schaefer as Gilda = RIGORMORTIS
Often: But, frankly, it was not a very good film.
All surface. Mizrahi might have done the film
better!
Mr. Matthew Epstein’s shelf life has long since expired.
I have actually seen Christine Schaefer as Gilda (I think with Gavanelli and Marcelo Alvarez). It was a few years ago in Covent Garden in the McVicar production, and she was quite affecting as I recall, looking very young and fragile. Last year (same production) Francesco Meli was the Duke, with Nucci – can’t remember the Gilda. He was OK-ish – a bit blah to be honest.
Matthew Epstein isn’t a product that has to be sold, as his clients are. And it is his job to extend their shelf life. If only for those wonderful Handel staged operas he produced at Carnegie Hall back in the day he deserves immortality. Hey -it’s not his fault if his clients aren’t all stars.
you wish there, in santa fe, instead they rely more on his word than yours. matthew epstein is far from out of the picture.
Mizrahi’s may be qualified than some opera directors. He’s long collaborated with Marc Morris and Peter Sellars, so he’s not ignorant of the process. Before he was a designer, he’d hoped to be a concert pianist and still plays as a form of relaxation. That he can read a score puts him a head of more than a few major directors. Most of all, he truly loves the form. Again, something you can’t say about some. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Dr. Miller.)
I am sure I am the only person who is reading this that is wishing it was Peter Mattei playing Billy Budd, instead. Instead, Mattei will grace us with Tomsky (?).
It says Tomsky but I would think Yeletsky is more likely, no? Tomsky is for a more dramatic voice, and Yeletsky at least gets that gorgeous aria. (But either way I agree with you.)
Mattei as Yeletsky makes more sense, unless they are using, say, Andrei Markov as Yeletsky.
At least the Met finally gets to hear Galouzine in one of his greatest roles ( Alexei in THE GAMBLER — seen in NY — and Rimsky’s Sadko being the others).
And by the way, Podles WAS asked– with not much notice in current terms — to do the Countess, but she has a conflict in the CENDRILLON with Joyce DiDonato being done ( and filmed, yay) in Paris.
So now that Heather Begg and Monica Sinclair cannot be imported, whom will Fiend and Billingsgate invite? Barstow, perhaps? She could be incomprehensible in two languages!
I agree . Dont knock someone that not only can do the costumes, set designs that can actually play music and read scores. I would say that this man deserves ‘the chance’ to direct. I have seen too many dumb shits having none of the above attibutes, get hold of a musical work, then fuck the insides completely out of it.
I hope it’s one of the HD broadcasts, that production is beautiful and it would be nice to have on DVD.
the met wants podles? taht’s news to me.
COSI FAN TUTTE (Nov-Dec) with Miah Persson, Isabel Leonard, Danielle de Niese, Pavol Breslik, Nathan Gunn, Wolfgang Holzmair*, c. William Christie*
ooooooh… hunkarama.
zajick
I wish the Met had broadcast the original cast for the new production of Pique Dame. We missed not having Rysanek in her last role at the Met (and I heard she was dynamite in that production), Heppener before all the problems and, I believe, Mattila just at the start of her rise in New York. Instead we got Domingo sleepwalking through the role the following year. The powers that be probably thought the opera would sell better on TV with him, but Tchaikovsky was not served well by that telecast.
Similarly, The Hose of Gelb is including DOMINGO alongside the qualified DiDonato and Daniels in the Christioe-led evening of baroque excerpt next season.
His one and only baroque role in TAMERLANO works on its own terms, but is approached as if it’s Donizetti. Gelb must feel that Domingo’s presence is the only way to get the provincials in the HD doors. This is truly sabotaging whatever legitimacy the project has before it starts. Utterly typical. Why not put Licitra and Guleghina aboard too???
Nerva Nelli says “His one and only baroque role in TAMERLANO . . .”
Actually, Domingo has at least two, having been Hippolite to Beverly Sills Aricie in Rameau’s opera in Boston decades ago in Boston. No, it doesn’t make him a Baroque specialist, it’s just for clarification.
I thought it was a mistake too but I have checked with Brad; Mattei is singing Tomsky. When Brad first posted this casting without identifying who was singing what I automatically assumed it was Yeletsky.