Only a “Nose” I give you
“The Met’s new production of ‘The Nose’ should be a hit with everyone except headline writers. Had the Shostakovich comedy bombed, they’d quip ‘Met blows nose’ or ‘Don’t pick this opera!’ But since this sassy, smart show is the highlight of the current opera season, they’ll have to settle for something like ‘Breath of fresh air’.” Our Own JJ reviews The Nose in the New York Post.
More brilliance from JJ ! While he may be happy to be at the NY Post, they should hire him fulltime at the NYT.
Very fun, well-written review from La Cieca’s maid, James Jorden. However, I have to dispute this sentence: “The debuting director, South African artist William Kentridge, evokes the 19th-century St. Petersburg of the story with his signature collages of newspaper clippings and old political posters.”
The original Gogol short story is set in 1836. Kentridge clearly reset the piece in the 1930’s around the time the opera was written. All of the newspapers and collages and costumes and props came from that period. Late modernist, futurist before Stalin shut that shit down.
1920s, actually! Constructivism.
The time when Russian composers were asked to toe the line and write Party – inspiring ‘tractor rhythm symphonies and such like’ set to encourage greater factory production and farm output. Plus, all the fostering of industrial ’steel girder and clenched fist’ Art. I once came across a young thing trying to be ‘a such desperate thing’. By it, trying to ’so cool’ by getting involved in far left politics. It was a bit of an uneducated ding-bat anyway, proven to me when it espoused the ‘virtues of the music of Mosolov’. Shit! ever heard some of that crap!’
Looking back: that whole era is now historical scrap metal, rusting away in dis-illusioned minds. It is like something fom two centuries ago, not one.
Having attended both the final dress rehearsal and the premiere of The Nose, I think it is very misleading for the reviwer to say that the audience was “frazzled” by the music. I found the audience to be notably more attentive, responsive and quiet than usual. The cheering at the end bordered on the uproarious. Especially for Kentridge and his team, for whom the biggest ovations were reserved. I also think, for a number of reasons, that it was completely appropriate to present this great score uninterrupted. Bravi tutti.
Count me among the (happily) frazzled. A certain amount of fatigue set in for me as the piece wore on—just overstimulated, I guess—and I found it a little harder to concentrate than if I’d had a breath of fresh air somewhere therein.
You might thusly have headlined your rave review:
Running Nose Top Pick!
SQIAC — uttering aloud “Good. Very, very good.”
or even ‘Pick the Nose’
Is this the first resoundingly successful new production to have its premiere at the Met under Gelb’s reign(as opposed to the Mingella Butterfly or the Chereau House of the Dead, which had already been seen elsewhere)?
The Trovatore went over fairly well. Maybe not quite up to this level of enthusiasm, but the response was generally positive. And that’s a standard rep piece.