Century of progress?
New York City Opera has announced its 2010-2011 season, and it looks like La Cieca’s precognitions were about 90% correct. (Please, hold your applause.)
According to the company’s press release, the season (beginning October 28) features mostly 20th century works, including
New York premieres, in new productions, of Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place and Stephen Schwartz’s Séance on a Wet Afternoon; a daring triple bill of Monodramas (including the US stage premiere of “Neither” by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett, and the world stage premiere of John Zorn’s “La Machine de l’être”, performed with Schoenberg’s “Erwartung”); and the return of Strauss’s Intermezzo and Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love
What apparently began life as a revival of the company’s venerable Turandot has evolved into “An Evening with Christine Brewer” season opening gala.
Gushes NYCO GM/AD George Steel, “Most of all, I love the incredible range of compositional styles this season: from the transparent simplicity of Donizetti to the opulent middle-period Richard Strauss to the blend of the popular and classical worlds in Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz—all this topped off by the delicious trio of Schoenberg, Feldman and Zorn. This is what City Opera was made to do, and what makes City Opera unique.”
A Quiet Place is such a long snooze, but it’s nice it can be re-evaluated. I guess there won’t be any people on the plaza holding up signs “Ticket Needed”. Nothwithstanding… good luck City Opera.
In the words of Paolina Strauss, “Garbage…..it’s ALL GARBAGE!!”
….or Paulina…..
If only “An Evening with Christine Brewer” were as Kay Thompson as it sounds.
“An Evening with …” makes me think she’ll be taking requests and questions from the audience. Any chance this would actually happen? I think that’d be so cool, disarming and informal.
Or anarchic, slovenly, and not what one pays an opera house and its orchestra to present.
ok.
Sigh.
I fail to see how Erwartung, Intermezzo and L’elisir are “garbage.” I can’t comment on Seance and A Quiet Place as I don’t know the scores, but I do think the Feldman and Zorn works should be heard before being branded as “garbage.” The fact that these works are contemporary does not make them worthless — far from it. As always, what I recommend is to not write the review until the performance has taken place.
I enjoyed a performance of A Quiet Place at Harvard in 1991. I don’t agree with the Crimson review that called it long and boring.
http://crimson-ws1.hcs.harvard.edu/article/1991/4/19/lowell-house-bungles-bernstein-pthere-is/
wow … glad to see someone from the same time & place here (were you a grad or undergrad then? and in which house if i may ask?) … small world indeed …
The choice of A Quiet Place for revival by Harvard’s Lowell House Opera in 1991 (inexplicably billed as only the second production ever of the work? not counting La Scala, Washington DC, and Vienna then?) was rather quixotic if not for the occasion of Berntein’s recent passing (revival of a more popular work would have less value in terms of public exposure, I’d imagine). The opera is long and has many tedious stretches of clunky music and clumsy psycho-babble explorations of family dysfunctional dynamics, but it somehow ends its tortuous journey on an uplifting note (could it be that the audience felt such relief when the opera finally ended?). Nonetheless I really enjoyed the zany canibalized recycling of “Trouble in Tahiti” for the (dead/resurrected) Mother’s flashback scene in the middle of the opera. The great pity was that for all the hassle of aseembling a fine young cast and putting up a visually pleasing and effective set, not to mention a sizeable orchestra of over 50 players in neat black dress, the production yielded a paltry audience of barely two dozens (at best!) on the night I attended … talking about playing to an almost empty house … so the performers should be applauded for their effort and their heart in reviving somewhat of a lost cause against great odds … I hope NYCO’s attempt won’t meet too similar a fate.
Have you fellas listened to Morty Feldman, ever? I mean, I have. I have sat with one of his own scores while following –don’t ask how–and I’m here to tell you, Phil Glass is a master of counterpoint and invention vis-a-vis Morty. An OPERA? Morty?
“An evening with Christine Brewer”??!!??
Hope to God she doesn’t sing that dreadful dreck from ‘Carnival’ she always wants to drag out. I KNEW she wouldn’t have the stamina for Turandot. What a waste of a major voice when there is such a dearth of that type.
Well, at least Intermezzo, in which Flanagan distinguished herself ten years ago, will be back and I would like to hear “A Quiet Place” which a couple of peeps have tried to convince me of.
Good Luck, Man of Steel!
Well, thank God NYCO is slowly coming out of the darkness.
I love the idea of having the concerts linked musically to the stage shows. This has been a great feature of life at the Liceu for some time now.
It seems strange that an opera house would open their season with a concert rather than an actual opera or staged scenes.
are they willing to hire us??????
well, maybe for the Monodramas? The Schoenberg seems to be made for the guy on the left. I would not mind getting lost in a forest with him around…
nice painting, by the way
Rosenkavalier trio meets the duetto buffo dei due gatti?
And people here actually complained about Gerard Mortier’s proposed first season? Wow.
How sorry I am that “St. Francois” didn’t come off. I’d gladly trade the Bernstein for that.
I’d trade three Bernsteins for that! Of course you’d have to, wouldn’t you, just in terms of length.
But yeah, when IS New York going to get St François? GET ON IT, GELB.