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.
I’m surprised they weren’t able to find a buyer for the Falstaff. Didn’t they give that production a fresh coat of paint for its last outing?
I think it would require more than a fresh coat of paint to get anything resembling direction from Signor Zeffirelli.
Heavens, no doubt about that. But I thought the sets and costumes themselves might be of value to another company. But then again, I didn’t realise they were quite so old.
The original costumes were destroyed in a fire and rebuilt, so they’re not quite as old as the sets.
As for direction, my goodness, there’s a DVD of a performance, isn’t there? What better direction could there be than, “Here, do what Plishka does.”
I imagine that any costumes in halfway decent condition will be kept and incorporated into new productions where possible, e.g., peasant skirts, soldier’s pants, etc., and only the scenery trashed.
This is interesting in part because of the impending Verdi bicentenary. Perhaps there will be new productions of Falstaff and Forza – and is the current Trovatore any good?
The Falstaff production was more than 40 years old. Even with a new coat of paint, it might be hard to sell. It would be the equivalent of a revival in 1916 of the first Bayreuth Ring production.
The new Trovatore (the McVicar) is VERY good.
There will be a new Falstaff by a Canadian who scored a hit on bway residing in the land of the sopranos
I thought Des Mcanuff was doing Faust. Mcanuff seems the only choice since he directed Jersey Boys. Did the Met hire him for two productions already?
Taking a peek at Brad Wilbur’s Met Futures let’s see what’s in line to replace these:
# Falstaff [2013-14]
# La Gioconda [Not listed]
# Hansel und Gretel [2011-12]
# Werther [Not listed]
# Boris Godunov [Not listed]
# The Bartered Bride [Not listed]
# Les Contes d’Hoffmann [Not listed]
# Faust [NP with ENO 2011-12]
# Giulio Cesare [Not listed]
# La forza del destino [Not listed]
# Bluebeard’s Castle
Note: his 2011-12 is pretty complete, 2012-13 about 1/2, the rest sketchy so those Not Listed will still probably be replaced.
Whew! The Death in Venice is still there!
# Erwartung
# Il trovatore
Dammit:
# Bluebeard’s Castle/# Erwartung [Not listed]
# Il trovatore [2012-13]
Huh? Isn’t there a new Boris opening in October and haven’t there been new productions of Hansel, Hoffmann and Trovatore since Gelb took over?
And I understand the Stephen Wadsworth Bartered Bride that Levine is scheduled to conduct at Juilliard in February will move to the MET as a Christmas-time family presentation. Garanca mentioned in an interview on Sirius that she had been asked by the MET for Charlotte in Werther and I believe there is a new Giulio Cesare in the works but not sure for when precisely.
FORZA and GIOCONDA will remain in limbo until adequate casts are found. I heard the date 2026 mentioned somewhere.
I’m sad that this gioconda has never been filmed.
The adequate casts mentioned for Forza and Gioconda were actually in 1926, Bets.
Not a revival of Bartered Bride !! This must be a bad joke.
Why? It’s a great opera when not saddled with the ghastly Tony Harrison (“British is better”) translation and when not as perversely cast as it has been by Fiend and Billingsgate over the years.
Another Cesare? It’s a shame they can’t broaden the rep a bit and do Alcina or Ariodante or something instead.
Or maybe they should just leave the Handel to City Opera, it’s never going to feel right in the Met.
One could also say that Handel is going to feel a little wrong at the City Opera until they start doing more than 60% of the score in non-Glimmertrash productions.
Just a thought, but maybe the Met is too big a venue for Handel operas. I seem to prefer hearing his work in much more intimate spaces. Mozart too.
True enough about City Opera, but the Met doesn’t have the best record with Handel productions either. That Rodelinda is lousy. And the house is just too big for Baroque opera.
Dessay is making her debut as Cleopatra next season in Paris…maybe they will make a NP espacially for her.
Bartered Bride was suposed to return in 2013-14 but has been deleted from the list.
Interesting that they kept Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung for 20 years before dumping it. It hasn’t been revived since it was premiered as a vehicle for Norman in ’89. I wonder if there were conversations with other sopranos about Erwartung that fizzled out over the years.
“I wonder if there were conversations with other sopranos about Erwartung that fizzled out over the years.”
Yes. Patrice Munsel rejected it as a Comeback Vehicle unless they added chorus boys to hold her aloft in the dance numbers.
bd-dum BUM, Miss Nell, ba-dum BUM !
“She’s a maniac! Maniac! And she’s dancin’ like she’s never danced before!”
Keep on’ truckin’ Patrice.
“Hier hinein? Man sieht den Weg nicht.”
“Er ist auch nicht da.”
“Nein, das ist doch nicht moglich.”
“Der Morgen trennt uns.”
Wundervoll und Vielen Dank, o Liebe Cieca!!!
.
Wasn’t that double-bill a vehicle for Levine? I can’t conceive of the soprano with the clout to get a production of Erwartung.
Speaking of double-bills:
Central City Opera is pleased to announce our 2011 Festival. For details, view the press release.
CARMEN by Georges Bizet
AMADIGI DI GAULA by George Friedrich Handel (North American Premiere)
A Double Bill of Three One Act Operas:
GIANNI SCHICCHI by Giacomo Puccini
LES MAMELLES DE TIRESIAS (THE BREASTS OF TIRESIAS) by Francis Poulenc
SEVEN DEADLY SINS by Kurt Weill
http://www.centralcityopera.org/2011Festival
Math is hard.
“As its final presentation in 2011, Central City Opera will produce three one act operas … These three productions will be presented as alternating double bills (two shows per evening). For the first time at Central City Opera, audiences will be given the option of purchasing one, two or three of these one acts, so they can stay for just part of the evening or attend on multiple nights for more flexibility.”
Interesting.
The production was before my time (I saw a grainy VHS copy of it many years later) so you may be right. I have no doubt that Levine’s desire to do it was a driving force. But casting Jessye in both operas made it a vehicle for her as well (making her the first woman in the Met’s history to do a monodrama). At that point, she was at the height of her stardom and had already had a few telecasts in her 6-year Met career.
I think it was sort of a joint Jimmy/Jessye vehicle, a two-seater. Er…. maybe a four seater…
Just read about Marie Collier’s Erwartung in San Francisco – the ovations and curtain calls lasted longer than the opera itself. I would love to hear from someone who remembers this performance!
Amadigi di Gaula was performed in New York City in June 1994 by Opera Manhattan, in a staged version, which I reviewed.
Boston Baroque opened its 2009-2010 season with a semi-staged AMADIGI.
The BC / E was a year or two before I started my opera going- what was the general consensus on the production?
Samuel Ramey did a slow strip tease over the course of the hour – every door opened he’d lose a piece of clothing. As one might expect for Ramey of this period, this also involved bare-chested strutting. The climax came when he doffed his long-auburn tresses, like Ochs in Act III. There was a lot of rolling around on the floor.
The opening of the fifth door was also quite exciting: apparently Bluebeard’s Var was on a spaceship.
Erwartung was kitted up as one might expect: tall, menacing trees, half-hidden dead body in the corner of the stage, grand piano with Liberace candelabra.
What is the story on the unused “Peter Grimes” production purchased from Salzburg? Does the Met really think they are reviving the John Doyle non-production? I was wondering if the Tyrone Guthrie was still preserved – probably the only Tyrone Guthrie production still in existence.
Apparently even the Brits hated this one:
(Sunday Times)
I have to say, with all due respect to Gualtier, there can be no such thing as a “Tyrone Guthrie production” when Guthrie has been dead for nearly four decades. What might be left of such a production would be several times refurbished sets, probably a new lighting plot, certainly new costumes, and some replication of basic blocking by an assistant director who was probably not even born yet when Guthrie rehearsed the show.
If a competent and reasonably intelligent soprano studied carefully and tried to replicate Maria Callas’s recording of Norma, would the result be a “Callas performance?”
I think they’d call that a “Lucia Aliberti performance.”
Or a Nelly Miricioiu one.
Rome gets the old Zef Don Giovanni????? But we already have an old Zef Don Giovanni!!!!!! Mind you we had an olf Zef Falstaff too and we got that as a “new” production to open – in a rather depressing manner I might add – the current season.
The saddest part of this news, for me, is the retirement of the Gioconda production. True, the casts in the last two revivals weren’t all one would like them to be, but the Met did spend money refurbishing those lovely, elaborate, very old-fashioned Montresor sets. Since I can’t envision the current Met regime expressing interest in a new Gioconda, I fear that this wonderful melodrama will now go the way of Lakme, never to be seen again on that stage in my lifetime.
In addition, this Gioconda has never been taped.
On the other hand, with the production destroyed, we are in no immediate danger of a Maria Guleghina Gioconda, so you see everything balances out.
During the last series of Gioconda broadcasts on Sirius there were interviews with some of the singers. I was rather amused by their sttempts to say just the right things, PR-wise. “This gorgeous old production; it’s so solid and wonderful, and theatrical” and then in the next breath saying how “People with asthma are dropping like mayflies backstage” and “My doctor says the swelling is going down and that it only took ten years off my career.”
My thinking here, based on the assumption that Peter Gelb may make his share of mistakes but is not willfully stupid (your mileage may vary) is that whatever old productions were in solid enough shape to be offered for sale were offered, and either nobody was interested or else accepting whatever was offered would have ended up costing the company more than demolition.
Some of these shows, like the Forza, Giulio Cesare and Peter Grimes were close copies of productions seen in other theaters and presumably still in storage at these other locale and therefore redundant. Others, the very old productions, would cost a fortune to refurbish assuming they were revived again, and in many cases (Werther, Gioconda) are vehicle shows anyway, which means that stars are going to want new productions. It seems to be that the most recent round of revivals of Gioconda in 2006 and 2008 must have been planned as a new production that got shelved somewhere along the way. I do recall that Roberto Alagna was rumored for the 2006 production, so maybe he dropped out when a new production was canceled?
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.
It should be Guleghina “GiocondaS.”
I heard a tape of her singing something recently and it sounded if she had five different singers living inside her all with differing vibratos, timbres, and vocal placements. All shared the same basic inability to find and maintain the right pitch above the staff.
Oh, and they all looked like the same slightly deranged drag queen, if said DG were a former NFL-linebacker. Jeez, she has got some shoulders on her.
I love Gioconda but to me, it’s an opera that I wouldn’t want to see unless one really had the right kind of singers for it. Same with Andrea Chenier. These operas just don’t survive decent performances. The singing needs to be spectacular and full of passionate abandon. Violetta Urmana (solid though she may be) is not the kind of singer for these operas.
Speaking of tenors who are very gratifying to the eye — well, we were just a little bit ago — whatever happened to Sean Pannikar?
Sean just did a wonderful Tamino in Atlanta. I see him on the roster at Santa Fe next year. I agree–very handsome.
I’m a bit surprised that Adriana didn’t end of on the trash heap. It’s even older than Falstaff, it wasn’t even new when it came to the Met in 1963 and at the last revival, only parts of the scenery were sound enough to be put on stage. But maybe they discarded it right after the last run of performances.
I don’t think it is too likely to be done again soon, the only soprano I can think of who might be able to pull it off is Dessi and I can’t see her returning to the Met in the near future.
Richard, Adriana was already trashed: the Guleghina perfs.
I’m awaiting the Fedoras next. Fedora, famously known as the “graveyard of sopranos.”