“Though Mr. Herheim’s work is rigorous, it is also fun, and this Rusalka is serious but the opposite of dour. It’s a circus: brightly colored and full of dancing and neon lights. The ball scene becomes a full-theater party, with confetti cannons fired from the upper balconies. The production is as scrupulous in its deconstruction of the text as a Wooster Group show, but with the joyous excess of Franco Zeffirelli’s Metropolitan Opera production of Turandot.” Zachary Woolfe reviews Stefan Herheim‘s production of Rusalka at La Monnaie. Read more »
At long last, Franco Zeffirelli opens up about his back-door route to the lap of luxury: “Ho dato il culo per fare carriera e mi è piaciuto.” [Attualisimo]
“Since Zeffirelli took his official leave from the Met in 2008, the company has experienced—some would say suffered—a backlash against glamour, or at least against those qualities that, thanks in part to Zeffirelli, are wrongly perceived as the synonyms of glamour: triviality and meretriciousness.” [Rough and Regie] (Photo: Ken Howard)
“Zeffirelli, who has been directing plays, films, and operas for more than 60 years, laments that the Met recently started phasing out some of his classic productions, including Traviata, Tosca, and Carmen, for ‘financial reasons,’ he says. And substituting them with ‘hippie crap’.” [Variety]
Lovely Marina Poplavskaya, arriving at the Mercedes T. Bass Grand Tier for dinner following the opening night of La traviata, demonstrates that the previous Franco Zeffirelli production has not gone to waste. The latter-day Scarlett O’Hara‘s motto: “Reduce Reuse Recycle!”
The answers of millions of supplicants worldwide (and thousands of Met-goers citywide) have been answered. “[Peter Gelb] said there were no plans to replace Mr. Zeffirelli’s productions of La Bohème and Turandot. [New York Times]
“The immitigable force of Italian melodrama and Mediterranean culture, which is loved throughout the world, today is worthy of a different fate and should become a means of new expressions, a national flag to be treasured. Instead, often great efforts are made to reject a culture, to massacre the work and stature of artists who have little more to look forward to. I love opera and seek deeply within to continue living up to the great Italian opera tradition, but today, only lower culture categories are promoted, causing us to miss an opportunity to assert the sheer force of Italian [...]
This is a rather old story, but La Cieca heard it confirmed just recently. You all have heard, I trust, that this summer the Arena di Verona, for the first time in its nearly 100 year history of opera performances, is miking both singers and orchestra. Why? Because Franco Zeffirelli, director of all five of this year’s productions, demanded amplification: “Se non mettete i microfoni ai cantanti non lavoro in Arena!” [Corriere del Veneto]
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