Gingerbread housing shortage
La Cieca hears that the Met has just freed up about 60 storage containers in their production storage facility in New Jersey, disposing of 14 old productions including such venerable classics as the Robert O’Hearn Hansel and Gretel, the Beni Montresor Gioconda and the Franco Zeffirelli Falstaff.
Among newer, perhaps less-beloved sets headed for the dumpster are the Michael Scott Forza which was seen 20 times between 1996 and 2006 and the notorious Paul Brown “taco chip” Trovatore, which is generally agreed to have represented the nadir of the Joe Volpe regime.
According to a source close to the Met, the list of trashed productions includes:
- Falstaff
- La Gioconda
- Hansel und Gretel
- Werther
- Boris Godunov
- The Bartered Bride
- Les Contes d’Hoffmann
- Faust [the Hal Prince disaster; not the later Andrei Serban fiasco]
- Giulio Cesare
- La forza del destino
- Bluebeard’s Castle
- Erwartung
- Il trovatore
- Peter Grimes [purchased from Salzburg, unused]
This housecleaning frees up 60 containers. To get an idea of how much room a production takes up, the Jack O’Brien Trittico (currently the house’s largest) fills 24 containers.
La Cieca’s tipster notes that the Met’s two previous Zauberflöte productions (Chagall and Hockney) are safely in storage, and the company has made a little money selling off old Zeffirelli productions, e.g., the Don Giovanni to Rome Opera, and the Carmen to Tel Aviv.
La Cieca wrote:
“In La Cieca’s opinion, no major opera house should be putting 40 year old productions on the stage on any sort of regular basis. One or two “classic” stagings, maybe, especially if the original director or a key assistant is on hand to supervise the revival. But as a matter of course, no, that’s death.”
And she could not be more correct. I’m sorry to see the FALSTAFF go, but even the last time, with refurbished sets, they couldn’t get Zeff to come and restage it – though in honesty, I doubt if even he would have been able to recreate the magic that happened in 1964, with Bernstein, Resnik, Colzani/Evans and Judy Raskin.
Currently the MET actually does maintain several aging productions that really should be kept on hand for the foreseable future: BILLY BUDD (1977) and CARMELITES (ditto) are each due again soon. ROSENKAVALIER (68) was just with us and will no doubt be back, and the recent revival of LULU (1977-80) is one of the classiest physical productions the house ever had.
I will miss BARTERED BRIDE, which I thought was cast well when new: Stratas, Gedda, Vickers and Talvela. They stayed together for a couple of revivals, too. Tony Harrison’s tone deaf translation didn’t take up a storage container and could easily be replaced. Another well-cast revival would have been quite welcome.
But enough; the original point is important: only a very rare production can outlast the quarter-century mark; nor should it.
BW, Bride was new in 1978 and didn’t get revived until 1996. And none of the original cast returned. Some of the early casting for that revival listed Stratas but she never appeared and in fact had sung her last Met performances the year before.
A agree that the Carmelites and Billy Budd are special, classical productions and would hate to see them go, but isn’t the problem getting a really well thought out , detailed restaging using existing sets?
I like the Lulu too, it was always very stylish looking to me but not so much that I wouldn’t be interested in a different take on the piece.
well Westbroek is going to be singing Gioconda soon or might have already done it. I would much rather hear her than Guleghina. It is a shame she was already booked elsewhere since her Fanciulla sounds really good.
With the trashing of Falstaff and Gioconda, does this mean that there are no productions left that were created for the old Met?
The bits and pieces that were used in the last revival of Adriana are being kept, apparently.
Also, the Gioconda premiered in the new house, in the fall of 1966.