Now that the Met’s 2013-2014 season has been published and almost immediately discussed to death, La Cieca thought it would be amusing to do a bit of speculation about what lies ahead as we approach the middle of the decade. An assemblage of gossip and guesswork about the 2014-2015 season follows the jump, and won’t it be fun to look back on this post next February when the official announcement is made? Read more »
“If Jonas Kaufmann isn’t quite a household name yet, it’s only a matter of time. Not only is the 43-year-old widely recognized as the greatest tenor since Pavarotti, his much-gushed-about locks make him the closest thing the opera world has to Justin Bieber.” [Huffington Post]
As with all good myths, certainly all the myths at the heart of Wagner’s operas, the juggling of symbols and archetypes and themes in Parsifal opens the piece to a great variety of interpretations. Many recent productions have twisted things in a way that seemed to strain or defy Wagner’s intricate libretto and lush, meticulous score: gray springtimes in a world beyond nuclear or environmental holocaust, that sort of thing. But the world of Wagner’s tale is, like our own, a world in crisis, on a razor’s edge. That’s bound to resonate with contemporary directors. They then have many options in setting out the workings of the crisis in this fable of a solution to whatever may be broken. Read more »
Like the hero of Parsifal, who finds the Holy Grail after a lifetime of frustrated wandering, the Met’s audience was finally rewarded for its patience.
Wagner is becoming an important calling card for Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre.
A new CD
One quick way to warm up: Watching tenor heartthrob Roberto Alagna.
Of particular visual interest in last weekend’s Lohengrin (though not perhaps so tantalizing as Jonas Kaufmann‘s aristocratic bare feet, pictured above) is the very obvious change in the staging that was made between the antegenerale (in which Anja Harteros sang Elsa) and the telecast opening night.
Cher Public