Avid scoopster Dan Wakin just couldn’t wait until next Tuesday like the rest of us, and so he’s spilled enough details about NYCO’s “next” season to make it bleeding obvious 2011-12 will also be the last. A “new” “production” of La traviata by the undead Dr. Jonathan Miller and the U.S. premiere of the dreck Prima Donna get the nice venue (BAM); for the Telemann opera, be prepared to trek to El Museo del Barrio. Read more »
“[Dr. Jonathan] Miller openly wonders if his defiantly naturalistic approach to opera makes him unfashionable in an art form bent on conceptualism.” La Cieca, in constrast, openly wonders when this whingeing old prat will finally shut the fuck up and retire already. [straight.com]
“As Ernesto, Barry Banks struggled against an allergic reaction and a humiliatingly camp pink get-up…” [The Telegraph]
Dr. Jonathan Miller, the autodidact and polymath who has redefined the words “coot” and “windbag” for the 21st century, took a well-deserved hiatus from his — what is it? – 11th or 12 absolutely final irrevocable annual retirement from operatic stage direction to announce that he doesn’t attend the theater, and, what’s more, nobody begs him to direct theater as they obviously should, what with his genius and all.
Dr. Jonathan Miller‘s “keenly awaited” new production of La boheme for the English National Opera has been postponed for two nights due to a blizzard in London. “Having made enemies of virtually every individual in the human race, I have concluded that, at 75, I should move on with my life,” Dr. Miller whinged. “My new project is to take offense at such inanimate things such as meteorological phenomena. “I suppose it is to be expected that such first nights as Elektra as the Bavarian State Opera and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Vienna Volksoper should go off without [...]
Celebrated fact-mangler Norman Lebrecht is at it again. Did you know that the Metropolitan Opera has in its repertoire a production of Der Rosenkavalier directed by Jonathan Miller? This interview includes a statement by Dr. Miller insisting his current La boheme (inspired by “the photoÂgraphic world of Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson and Kertezsz,” dontcha know) will be the last opera he ever, ever directs. Again, no surprises here, since the good doctor has been stuttering that same idle threat since approximately the era of the bell-bottom. Speaking of the Swinging Sixties, here’s a reminder of what Dr. Miller is supposed to be famous [...]
New York City Opera has commissioned American composer Charles Wuorinen to write an opera based on “Brokeback Mountain,” a love story about two U.S. ranch-hands that won three Oscars when it was turned into a movie. The opera house’s spokesman Gerard Mortier said in a statement on Sunday that Wuorinen had accepted an invitation to compose an opera entitled Haroun and the Sierra of Sissies, based on Annie Proulx‘s short story. It is slated to premiere during City Opera’s 2013 spring season in a production by Jonathan Miller. Casting for the work will include Ian Bostridge as Ennis del Mar [...]
Verdi’s La Traviata opens the season and will run July 18 through August 25. Arguably Verdi’s most popular work, it returns to the Glimmerglass Opera stage after 20 years in a new production directed by Jonathan Miller Yes, that’s right, the oft-retired Dr. Miller has been dragged kicking and screaming into the opera arena yet once more, much against his will. Or, as Angela Gheorghiu so charmingly put it, “Jonathan Miller? I barely know him. He just used my name to promote himself, that’s all.†[Glimmerglass Opera. Warning, this link opens as a PDF, an piece of software as unnecessary [...]
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