Scarred for life
“This, after all, is opera, opera in New York, not some dainty pastime like professional hockey, and the stage is crowded with grumbling members of the old guard who aren’t renewing subscriptions, disenchanted reviewers, vendors of vitriol on blogs like Parterre Box…” [New York Times]
About the “Lyon” Parsifal… This is the opening paragraph of John Allison’s review of the Lyon production;
“Since his operatic debut with the Canadian Opera Company in 1997 (Symphony of Psalms and Oedipus Rex) and subsequent Siegfried there, the director François Girard has made Opéra de Lyon something of a second musical home. His new Parsifal unites both houses, adding in the Met for good measure in a co-production that travels to New York next, in February. There are distant echoes of that 2005 Siegfried in his second engagement with Wagner, and though his style has perhaps become simpler he still uses human bodies en masse to create sculptured pictures on stage.”
wonneweibchen: Good call!
No Gelb doesn’t talk about singing, but I’m not sure I want to hear what he has to say about it. I don’t think he really notices.
That’s a big difference between him and Bing. Bing wasn’t always right (by a LONG chalk), but he did love the art and knew something about it. And was interested in getting hold of hot new numbers who could do it.
ALSO: When Bing sought directors from the theater, he found directors who knew opera and cared about it. Margaret Webster, Alfred Lunt, Tyrone Guthrie. And he had a regular house team in O’Hearn & Merrill who knew the pieces they were doing. No Bart Shers or Mary Zimmermanns here — or who was that oaf who did the Peter Grimes?
La Cieca’s List:
1. Madama Butterfly
Haven’t seen it. Waiting for a soprano who can sing it.
2. Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Passable.
3. The First Emperor
Didn’t see it. Found a tape of the Chinese film it’s based on. Hot!
4. Die Ägyptische Helena
Passable. Damrau was great.
5. Il Trittico
Overblown. Worst staging of Tabarro EVER.
6. Orfeo ed Euridice
Lousy. Hate the chorus setup.
The whole production is about the Mizrahi costumes.
7. Lucia di Lammermoor
Replace, please! Unmusical, undramatic.
Hate it more every time I see it.
8. Macbeth
Passable. If they ever get a decent Lady M, I might to back, but I’d prefer a new production when I do.
9. Iphigénie en Tauride
Acceptable. Except why is Clytemnestra’s ghost (not a character in the script) consoling her murderer? And why is the altar facing the goddess’s buttocks? And why is nothing in the production distracting me from those things?
10. Hänsel und Gretel
Lousy. I’m told it scares children.
The old one was so good I couldn’t believe it.
11. Peter Grimes
Awful. They don’t dare bring it back and they can’t afford another. This production has killed a favorite opera, with me and much of the audience.
12. Satyagraha
Knocked me out. Loved it!
Didn’t expect it.
13. La Fille du Régiment
Passable. Gosh, Dessay is annoying.
14. Doctor Atomic
Production passable, orchestra score attractive, libretto atrocious. Why is this being given in an opera house? Why are singers involved?
15. La Damnation de Faust
Annoying, overactive, inhuman. (Lepage!)
16. Thaïs
Passable.
17. La Rondine
So lovely to look at you might think it was an opera.
18. Il Trovatore
Acceptable, especially after the last one.
19. La Sonnambula
Atrocious. They stomped all over this exquisite, delicate little antique. Next time, just don’t open the curtain. Perform in front of it in concert. Much better.
20. Tosca
So ugly I never want to see it again.
And I didn’t like Zeffirelli’s much either.
Schenk! THAT was a Tosca!
21. From the House of the Dead
Very good.
22. Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Passable, if you can forget the previous one.
23. Carmen
Passable. Interesting with good singers.
(Kaufmann. Antonacci — oh wait, she’s not here.)
24. Attila
Ghastly. A barely passable opera performed atrociously by singers who sounded like they were the first four Gelb bumped into out on the Plaza. Worst sets, staging, costumes EVER.
They won’t revive it, but the opera stinks, so who cares?
25. The Nose
Very good, but there’s hardly any singing in it, so why is it being given at the Met?
26. Hamlet
Hideous production and lousy casting killed what is, believe it or not, a fairly strong grand opera. The sets made me want to go back to Tosca. The edition, having the Ghost kill Claudius, made Hamlet’s presence in the opera pointless. Keenlyside didn’t sound very good anyway.
27. Armida
Zimmerman’s greatest Met success!
Lousy production. Mediocre score.
28. Das Rheingold
Annoying.
29. Boris Godunov
Passable.
(If you can forget the old one.)
30. Don Carlo
Passable.
(If you can forget the old one.)
31. La Traviata
Haven’t seen it yet. Want to, now it has a decent cast.
32. Nixon in China
Okay.
33. Le Comte Ory
Lousy.
34. Die Walküre
Awful, the most criminally misdirected of the Ring.
MTV opera staging: Something has to HAPPEN each bar, when in fact Wagner’s pace is deliberate and the music IS what’s happening. Too much high tech. (Lepage!)
35. Anna Bolena
Acceptable. Dull colors.
36. Don Giovanni
Didn’t see it. Do I have to?
37. Siegfried
Rather enjoyed this. Have the feeling someone told Lepage what Wagner was about, or he figured it out himself.
38. Faust
Passable. But pointless.
Maybe they should sing this opera on a set of Las Vegas neon …
39. The Enchanted Island
Handsome production.
Hope they never bring the opera back.
That libretto! Gack!
40. Götterdämmerung
Rather enjoyed this. Have the feeling someone told Lepage what Wagner was about, or he figured it out himself.
41. Manon
A bed in the nave in case the priest wants to screw after confession?
Passable.
42. L’Elisir d’Amore
Didn’t see it.
43. Un Ballo in Maschera
Interesting. More than passable. Maybe even good.
Want to see it again.
44. Maria Stuarda
Passable.
Slightly annoying in the insertion of ten years between two acts that (in the score) follow immediately.
45. Rigoletto
Haven’t seen it. In no rush.
46. Parsifal
Fabulous.
Well, let me break that down:
Production: Fabulous
Sets, costumes, physical montage: Fabulous
Casting: Fabulous
Chorus: Fabulous
Orchestra: Fabulous
News that they’re not bringing it back because Levine wants to do Wozzeck instead: Deeply depressing
General Trend: Improving, greatness still rare.
And lord knows I remember Volpe mis-steps, usually due to hiring a director who was a nut.
(Trovatore? The Serban Faust? Mazeppa? The Zambello Lucia? the Flimm Salome and Fidelio? the Tristan? the ugly Luisa Miller? Macbeth? the Del Monaco Fanciulla? Norma?)
But I left the Met exhilarated more often than not, after things like Mefistofele, War & Peace, Billy Budd, Benvenuto Cellini, Frau ohne Schatten, Les Troyens, Forza, Lohengrin, La Juive, Lady M of Mtsensk, Capriccio, Jenufa, Rake’s Progress, Katya Kabanova, et al.
Does he know why the Lepage Ring failed with so many people? He seems hurt when we don’t like it despite the fact that he spent so much money on it.
Why has no interviewer asked Gelb how he feels about singing? Who he likes, personally? (Bocelli? Groban? Jenkins? Church?)