To take on the nerd stuff first: in general the tech now is pretty close to transparent. The projected image is clean and detailed, with a strong sense of light and shadow; textures of fabrics in particular I thought came across very clearly, without the super-sharp focus that tends to make everyone, even 19-year-old starlets with airbrushed makeup, look haggard. The sound is clear, though it is obviously mixed as a broadcast and not as a theater acoustic: voices are extremely present and the bigger instruments turned a bit strident as (I would assume) they overloaded the individual microphones worn by the singers. The orchestra was more plausible sounding, somewhere in the middle distance, and there was very little stage noise besides the banging and thumping that naturally accompany the beating of Masetto, for example.  I was particularly impressed at how the engineers managed to minimize the rumble of falling chairs during Donna Anna’s great act 1 recitativo accompagnato.

There were glitches and my sense was that they were somewhat worse than par for the course. For the first half of act 1, the sound would drop out for an instant every five minutes or so, though eventually that resolved. Worse was a signal loss during the finale ultimo, just at the point when Don Ottavio and Donna Anna sing their little “reconciliation” duettino. I took a bathroom break before leaving and then heard music as I re-entered the lobby, so I was able to return to the auditorium for the final moments of the opera. It seems like there should be some way for the local operator to skip back in the stream and show the missing moments, but at any rate it wasn’t a deal-breaking glitch.

That I was still interested to see that notoriously anticlimactic epilogue is a tribute to Carsen’s production. It may not have opened any new doors in Don Giovanni interpretation, but the fairly familiar theme of metatheater as manipulation was presented with flair, a lot of humor, and a visual restraint that is both chic in itself and self-effacing in throwing the focus onto the performers. Big-personality singers like Anna Netrebko and Barbara Frittoli positively bloom when styled in little black dresses and sleek coiffures. In fact, they closely resembled Anouk Aimée and Yvonne Furneaux in one of the all time greatest “style” films, La Dolce Vita.

What sets Carsen above a lot of other directors immersed in pop culture, though, is that he uses these elements not as ends in themselves. In other words, he doesn’t fall into the trap a hack director might do, and present Don Giovanni as a sort of rehash of La Dolce Vita. For example, La Netrebko is the only one here wearing sunglasses, nd even that modernist cliche is rationalized by the dramatic situation: she is attending a funeral for her father.

Where Carsen doesn’t quite pull the conceit off is where most performances of Don Giovanni come to a crashing halt, i.e., between Zerlina’s second aria and the graveyard scene. This big lull in the second act is, I think, da Ponte’s fault: he ran out of story and so the plot marks time for necessary (and beautiful) music movements. Carsen’s solution was in part to indicate “it’s just an opera, after all,” with the sextet flailing away in conventional gestures, lit by footlights, as Don Giovanni and Elvira’s maid enjoy the private performance. That left the two grand arias, of course, and there Carsen didn’t seem to have such rigorous ideas.

The finale ultimo (what we saw of it) seemed a bit half-baked too. Making Don Giovanni’s death a mirror image of the Commendatore’s felt a little too neat to me, and from the time the old man drew his sword it was all too obvious where the scene was going. That that the “death” was just another manipulative performance by the Don was a good idea, but I think its irony might have landed better if the death scene we just saw had been more conventional, the “standard” demise with flames and such.

The singers were all on a high level without any example of absolute brilliance. I was awed by Netrebko’s ferocious attack on “Or sai chi l’onore” and I love the sheer velvet of Peter Mattei‘s baritone, especially how he can suggest vehemence though emphasis of diction without pushing his lyric instrument into anything like an ugly sound. Frittoli and Giuseppe Filianoti in a way are similar performers in that they transcend non-stellar vocal material with dramatic intensity and superb musicality. That said, her voice is in poorish condition generally these days and his more generally good, though in Ottavio’s music he sounded tight, as if on the fence whether to sing out or to fabricate a “genuine” Mozart sound. (I wish he’d sing out.)  Štefan Kocán (Masetto) is an artist that bears watching, and not just because he’s so pretty!

The biggest letdown was Daniel Barenboim‘s conducting, which doesn’t belong in any opera house, let alone La Scala. After a slow, erratic and noisy performance, the maestro took the Maria Ewing coward’s way out in his curtain call, appearing onstage not alone but with the orchestra. Anyone that worried about being booed needs to find another place to work.

It delivers a thoughtful examination of the themes and symbols of this complex work, a detailed exploration of how the plot and dramatic arc of the opera prefigure the history of modern Germany and Bayreuth itself, and, most of all, a deeply moving, cathartic theatrical experience that serves as a testament to the continued possibility of redemption.

In this production, time really does become space. Location, chronology, and identity all move with a seamlessness that even a film director might struggle to replicate. The action begins almost immediately after the prelude starts when the curtains part to reveal the interior of Wahnfried, Wagner’s home in Bayreuth. Herzeleide, Parsifal’s mother, lies dying in bed. She begs her fearful son to approach her. He does so reluctantly and then goes off to play with his bow and arrow. While he is away she dies; a doctor and maid prepare the body. A curtain is drawn over the windows; it is identical to the stage curtain in the Festspielhaus.

Parsifal returns. The figure in the bed begins to writhe. His mother has changed into Kundry and she grabs the boy, smothering him in her embrace. He runs away towards the front of the stage and begins to surround himself with stone blocks. His fortress comes to resemble Klingsor’s tower. The curtains towards the rear of the stage part and the front of the set stretches and expands so that we are now in Wahnfried’s garden with the all-important bed center stage by the fountain and Wagner’s grave over the prompter’s box. Gurnemanz and the other knights of the Grail have wings like eagles, symbolic of both their divine mission and the fledgling German empire.

And this is just the first few minutes of the show. From there, Herheim manages to tell the story of Parsifal’s quest and to recapitulate the next 100 or so years of German history.. I would be hard-pressed to summarize the details of the staging in a reasonable space. Instead, let me choose a couple of highlights that give a flavor of the production. During the Transformation scene in Act I, Parsifal’s life plays out before him; his mother gives birth (in that bed, of course) and then Kundry steals away the baby. A platform rises out of the central fountain and the baby is brought there to be circumcised. At the moment of circumcision, Amfortas cries out in agony.

With these few deft strokes (as it were), we are confronted with both Kundry’s Jewishness and the symbolic nature of Amfortas’ wound. While this is happening, elaborate arches descend from the flies and the central portion of the set has become a replica of the set for the Grail Temple from the very first Bayreuth production of Parsifal.

Act II manages encompass the time period from World War I to the end of World War II. Klingsor, in fishnet stockings, holds sway over an army field hospital, his army a monstrous assemblage of dead and dying soldiers. The flower maidens begin as field nurses before they achieve efflorescence as Weimar Republic showgirls. Kundry becomes Lola Lala in The Blue Angel and delivers “Ich sah das Kind” with a seductiveness and conversational intimacy worthy of Marlene Dietrich herself.

For Kundry’s final attempt at seduction, she makes a quick unseen change to a white shift and flowing red wig thus becoming Amfortas himself in her efforts to make Parsifal see her as a victim. Such is the quality of the direction (or should I say audience misdirection) that her disappearance isn’t noticed until her surprisingly reappearance

The inevitable Nazis appear in the final few minutes until Parsifal destroys both them and Klingsor’s empire by plunging his spear into Wagner’s grave. Act III begins in the ruins of post-war Germany and with a little stage magic involving a few lights and a mirror shows the reopening of Bayreuth during the Good Friday Spell. The promised redemption does indeed come and we even get a dove at the very end in a beautiful image of hope for Germany.

Despite the visual and intellectual density of the production, the satisfaction of experiencing it does not its satisfactions are still primarily dramatic. The storytelling is always clear and wedded to both the music and the text. The different narratives embedded in the production bring additional insights, but unlike so many regie productions, a viewer doesn’t have to decrypt the production to enjoy it.

I do hope that the rumored plans to film this production come to fruition, as every Wagnerian should be able to see this production. It serves a welcome reminder that machines are not a substitute for stagecraft. The production itself is unlikely to ever travel given its extreme technical complexity. The stagehands got a well-deserved group bow during the curtain calls; they managed all the complex changes and precisely timed cues with remarkable precision and only a few thuds. In fact, they even managed the near impossible Klingsor starts to throw Spear/blackout/Parsifal holds spear aloft lighting cues perfectly.

Daniele Gatti led a supple performance that failed to have the expected impact, emotionally or sonically. He made little of the special Bayreuth acoustic for which this work was designed. The last time I heard Parsifal in Bayreuth, it felt as if the auditorium was the Grail Hall—the building vibrated and the unseen choir seemed to emanate from somewhere surrounding us rather than on stage. That did not happen and the orchestra had a dullish, gray sound.

Simon O’Neill was a very fine Parsifal, making much of his character’s initial innocence and naiveté and transition to full heroic maturity. His tone is somewhat nasal and wiry, but it had the requisite heft and impact. Detlef Roth as Amfortas , struggled vocally, nearly losing his voice in Act I. No indisposition was announced and he made it through Act III with fewer difficulties. While I would not want to pass judgment on his voice based on this performance, he certainly projected his character’s agonies with minimal reliance on the stock flailing.

Kwangchul Youn was a vocally imposing Gurnemanz. He was very enthusiastically received by the Bayreuth audience, but I found him somewhat bland in his characterization, particularly since this production presents him as Klingsor’s alter ego.

Reticence was not a problem for the Klingsor of Thomas Jesatko, who gave (you’ll forgive the expression) a ballsy performance. Not only did he work the fishnets and eyeliner; he dug deep into Klingsor’s dark nature without going over the top, even when the staging provided more than ample temptation. However, his acting was more imposing than his voice; I wasn’t sure how he would do in a different venue.

And finally, there was the protean Kundry of Susan Maclean. The character gets quite a workout in this staging; in fact, I lost track of her costume changes and sudden materializations. It required an extraordinary singing actress to pull this all off, which she did without a hint of showiness. Her attention to the text and musical line was most impressive. Other Kundries have had more voluptuous voices and sheer aural oomph, but I did not find her performance lacking. Of the many singers that were new to me at the festival, she was the one I was most eager to hear again.

This Parsifal served as a benchmark for what a “festival performance” should be—a presentation requiring the special combination of venue and performers as well as the rehearsal time and focus that are only possible in festival settings. It may have lacked in star power, but it dazzled with both heat and light.

Photos: Enrico Nawrath / Bayreuther Festspiele.

If salvation exists, it’s in the form of evolution; the possibility that we might create a life form that has a less a punishing existence than ours. Or so director Sebastian Baumgarten incoherently argued in his not-so-hot mess of a new production of Tannhäuser for Bayreuth.

The set is a new version of a massive installation by artist Joep van Lieshout entitled “The Technocrat.”  Spread out over three levels, it shows a fully self-contained factory/community where the excrement of the workers is harvested to make biogas, which is then used to make their food and all-important alcohol. This huge factory is run by Wartburg industries. The program notes point out that this setting “parallels the traditional setting of Tannhäuser” as it is a place of power, society, systems and conventions…[that] stands quite opposite the Venus mountain where individual hedonistic freedom rules.“ In the front are two areas for spectators, whose purpose, I suppose, is to let the audience know that we, too are plugged into the Matrix, part of the Technocrat system.

The Venusberg is a round cage that rises from the floor with a few tall rocky structures inside to suggest a cave. Garish lights constantly change color while cavemen do aerobics and creatures that are either tadpoles or sperms recreate the choreography for “The Madison” number in Hairspray. Venus, who is pregnant, is done up as a low-budget evil sci-fi queen while Tannhäuser dances in his grungy underwear and T-shirt. All in all, it looks like a really sad theme night at Area.

When Tannhäuser returns to earth, he is greeted by the shepherd, here a perpetually sozzled, tiresome functionary in the Technocrat hierarchy. The upper echelons of the Wartburg hierarchy are clad in similarly ugly jodhpur-sleeveless vest combos, while the pilgrims have to make do with sack-like ponchos. The pilgrims are the lowest caste of workers in the factory, lured from location to location by the promise of salvation. Rome was just the latrine where their waste was harvested to make Soylent Wartburg.

In Act II, Elisabeth, clad in a garish red dress and high heels embraced the alcohol production tank and ran frantically up and down the set until she was sufficiently winded to begin “Dich, teure Halle”. The aria itself was inexplicably staged as the “Jewel Song” from Faust, complete with casket. The singing contest might have been mistaken for a singing contest but Tannhäuser poured water on the other contestants to keep things lively. The purpose of the singing contest in this vision of the work was not clear.

In Act III, the pilgrims returned in the form of newly promoted factory workers, their sacks upgraded to pants and athletic shirts. They showed their gratitude by frenetically dusting and cleaning the machinery. In another nod to the actual plot of the work, Elisabeth scanned the pilgrims for Tannhäuser. Wolfram then sang his ode and forced Elizabeth into the Biogas tank, killing her. Tannhäuser returned without a staff and sang an anguished Rome narration and then rejected Venus before collapsing.

Then, with no motivation at all, the Venusberg rose from the floor with the sirens from the first act rejoicing. The Pope showed up, the sperm-poles did a happy dance, Elisabeth emerged unharmed from her time in the swamp gas isolation tank and Venus joined the fun holding her newborn baby, indicating the possibility of a better world, or that, at least, the cycle would get the fresh meat it would need to continue.

There was, an interesting idea at the heart of the production as it tried to explore the nature of salvation. However, the actual execution was incoherent and self-indulgent as the primary interest of the director was the Technocrat installation rather than presenting the opera. I also believe that an audience should be able to appreciate the milieu and intent of the staging without having either thoroughly read the program notes or a chemical engineering degree.

As an indication of the director’s attitude towards the work, he wrote in the program notes that he wanted to present the work without intermission so the audience would not leave the realm of the installation. He then claimed that the caterer wouldn’t allow. I had always assumed that, given the powerful Bratwurst lobby in Franconia, key artistic decisions at Bayreuth were made by the caterers.

Thomas Hengelbrock opted for the so-called Dresden version of the opera, which is the opera as it was first published. He wanted to do an earlier version that would more closely resemble work as it was first performed in Dresden in 1845, but the Festival didn’t allow it, probably because this would not be one of The Master’s sanctioned versions of this oft tinkered with work. His conducting showed a propensity for perversely slow tempos at strategic moments. Even so, we were spared what would have been an insufferable ballet and more music for Venus, which was sung quite hideously by Stephanie Friede, who has a car alarm of a voice and no compensating distinction in stage deportment.

Otherwise the cast was reasonably strong. Lars Cleveman was a compelling Tannhäuser, capable of projecting his character’s anguish. Neither the vicissitudes of the Rome Narrative nor the staging posed him any obvious difficulties. Michael Nagy gave us a warm lyrical Wolfram van Eschenbach and his Ode to the BioReactor was one of the evening’s highlights. Camilla Nylund’s Elisabeth sounded rather generic vocally lacking the heft and sheen that more compelling singers have brought to the part. Gunther Groissbock was indisposed, so he acted the part of the Landgrave while Kwangchul Youn sang the part from a music stand at the side of the stage with reasonable degree of authoritativeness.

Do they really not have covers in Bayreuth, even for new productions? I assume not because we had a last minute substitution for Walther von Stolzing in Meistersinger the night before. Stefan Vinke had apparently arrived quite late on the evening before the performance and had managed to learn the staging and do a quick refresher on the music in a matter of hours. He did quite well, barely looking at the prompter and only needing an occasional gentle push from Eva. Someone should have told him after the first act that he didn’t need to scream as much as he did. Even so, he had sufficient reserves to muscle his way through the evening, only lightly damaging the music in the process.

The performance I saw of Die Meistersinger is supposedly the last for Katharina Wagner’s production. She took a bow at the end with designer Tilo Steffens and was vociferously booed. There was also extended booing after Act II. The production remains largely as seen on the DVD of the production I reviewed (and for which La Cieca provided a detailed exegesis in the comments). She did add some business for the Meistersingers where they took the Eucharist by consuming pages of a specially chosen book.

On second viewing, I admired the fierce relentlessness with which she pursued her argument, and the cogency with which she argues her thesis. However, her view of the work allows no room for any humanity for any of the characters. Watching it anew was akin to reading an autopsy report. Even so, the second half of the last act is such great theater that one forgives the very big chill that precedes it.

Musically, this was not at a festival level. Sebastian Weigle conducted like a bored guide on a bus tour, desultorily pointed out the landmarks. Adrian Eröd as Beckmesser gave the only truly memorable performance, fully realizing the director’s multi-faceted vision of his character. The chorus did perform at an exalted level and executed the complex staging flawlessly.

Photos: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath.

The production—which Alex Ross in The New Yorker called “an austere, elegant, darkly enchanting piece of theatre”—kicks off at 16:00 at Bayreuth, which translates to 10:00 AM here in New York.  La Cieca will open the chatroom for discussion during the customary lengthy Green Hill intermissions.

Der Kaiser: Stephen Gould
Die Kaiserin: Anne Schwanewilms
Die Amme: Michaela Schuster
Barak, der Färber: Wolfgang Koch
Sein Weib: Evelyn Herlitzius

Bühnenbild: Johannes Leiacker
Kostüme: Ursula Renzenbrink
Musikalische Leitung: Christian Thielemann
Regie: Christof Loy

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Muhly’s opera, with libretto by Craig Lucas, is both a detective story and cyber-cautionary tale of “the dark side of the Internet”.  It unfolds, rather baroquely as flashbacks within flashbacks. As the opera begins, a detective inspector is reflecting over the confusing facts of a difficult case.  One teenage boy has been accused of stabbing another behind a shopping mall; the accused claims a masked stranger attacked them, but security camera footage suggests otherwise.

As explanation of how he came to be at the crime scene, he offers his story of how an encounter with a frightened teenage girl in a chatroom grew into something quite perilous. His online chats, sung as duets with text projected above and sometimes on the set, with an increasingly ominous set into a world of conspiracies, sexual predators, and genuine physical danger. Revealing more of the plot would subvert the intentions of the creators and the ENO who revealed as little of the plot as they could in interviews and promotional materials.

Even the program book forsook the typical plot summary.  A “didhedoit” might seem a slim basis for a full-length opera, but the libretto supplies enough intrigue, passion, and violence to serve as gunpowder for an evening’s worth of operatic fireworks.

However, the treatment feels cinematic, not operatic, rushing headlong from scene to scene with the music gamely trying to keep pace, rather than drive the work forward or reflect on the action.  It was only in the mesmerizing choral interludes, depicting the online world that the music gained the attention it deserved elsewhere. The net result was a dramatic choppiness that fought against any sense of broader musical structure in the work.  Operas are written in paragraphs and this felt too much like a series of strung together sentences.

Now, many of those sentences were exquisitely beautiful; Muhly has a remarkable ear for sound, his mastery of timbre in his orchestral writing was heard to particular advantage in the interludes which depict the bustle, buzz, and back alleys of the online world without resorting to electronic sounds.

Other highlights included an all-too-brief church scene the sequence in which the detective solved the crime (including a lovely musical “a-ha”) and the opera’s final choral peroration  His setting of text was also very admirable both for allowing the clear projection of words and for the well-judged deployment of melisma.

The performers presented the work with a palpable commitment and enthusiasm, even if the orchestra under conductor Rumon Gamba got occasionally tongue-tied coping with the musical language.  As the inspector, Susan Bickley captured her character’s resolve and determination, despite a part that demanded that she spend much of the opera in a state of exasperated befuddlement.

Other major roles were cast with young, relatively unknown singers, all of whom made their most of the opportunity.  Tenor Nicky Spence as the accused Brian was particularly fearless, both in his emotional intensity and his willingness to take on some sticky, as it were, sexual business that other performers might balk at.

Soprano Mary Bevan, as Rebecca, Brian’s threatened chat partner, projected the right mix of allure, vulnerability, and ambiguity. Joseph Beesley as a boy soprano  Brian hears sing in church had an extremely powerful voice of surprising emotional range.  One hopes that most of these singers travel with the work to the Met, although one doubts Mr. Beesley will still be singing treble roles in two years.

Overall, it’s a work I would want to experience again, particularly in a different production. The ENO/ Metropolitan Opera co-production by director Bartlett Sher made significant use of video projections done by members of 59 Productions.   Their videos were haunting, capturing both the seductiveness and threat of the online world, but they couldn’t salvage the overall production, which had some particularly maddening directorial choices.

One was that the set was in nearly constant motion; the detective’s desk did multiple laps around the stage before the evening ended.  A character might be in the middle of a thought or there would be a particularly dramatic interchange and then the set would start shifting, seriously disrupting both the music and the drama.

Secondly, there was no consistency or logic to how the characters’ excursions to the online world were displayed. A character might start a chat on an empty stage only to have their desk with computer carried on by stagehands in the middle of the scene. Characters chatting electronically with Brian might be positioned at opposite ends of the stage and then suddenly enter his room, a powerful device if it were deployed with some consistency and didn’t cause confusion when characters appeared in Brian’s room who were actually in there.

In another extreme instance, Brian presented his recollection of a chat and then the staging showed what happened to the other participant in the chat after the chat ended, even though Brian couldn’t have seen the events and we were supposed to be watching his recollections. It was not a production, alas, to win over the doubting members of the Cher Public to the Sher Public.

Lack of a steady directorial hand was not an issue for Alden’s disturbing new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream seen at its last performance of the run. It scored a regie hat-trick as it simultaneously managed to tell the story of the opera, to highlight the psychosexual content of the won and to reflect upon how the plot and themes of Dream might have had a particular resonance for the composer.

The setting is the deserted courtyard of a British boy’s boarding school late at night.  Before the music begins, a young man, whom we eventually learn is Theseus, wanders on in a pensive mood.  The program book tells us he is there on the eve of his wedding.  He sits on the ground and drifts off, deep in thought, eventually falling asleep and starting to dream. His dream is the opera and it soon reveals why he might be drawn back to his school as he is about to begin married life.

The school is an oppressive place, the threat of violence, physical or sexual, seems very real.  Puck is Theseus as a younger boy.  Oberon is the domineering headmaster; Tytania the music teacher; and the fairies are the students at the school. Oberon and Tytania’s cruelly manipulate the boys by offering them the possibility of being their “favorite”.  Puck has just lost his favorite status and he is desperate to be back in Oberon’s good graces, even though a new boy (“the boy stolen from the Indian king ”) is now the object of Oberon’s affections.

Puck must not only help Oberon get revenge on Tytania for toying with Oberon’s new chosen lad, but he must also, as the logic of dreams would have it, wreak havoc on the relationships of his current-day friends (the quartet of lovers) and other citizens who will provide entertainment at the wedding (the rude mechanicals). The havoc is quite extreme.  In act II, the school is set afire and in a considerable display of stagecraft burns intensely, but is not consumed.

Just as the chaos is calming down at the end of Act II and the fairies sing their consoling lyric “The man shall have his mare again, And all shall be well” over ambiguous harmonies, an ominous veiled woman walks on to the horror of the dreaming Theseus; this turns out to be his bride to be Hippolyta.  Eventually, Theseus awakens from his dream and goes off to be married and enjoy a bawdy play, but Puck’s return for his final exhortation to the audience, delivered here with anger and bitterness, reminds us that abused boys never quite believe that they have awakened from their nightmare.

This approach resonated with the music and the text in surprising and enlightening ways.  It connected Dream in a to Britten’s other works about loss of innocence and corruption.  Puck, the only child on stage whose voice has changed, has lots his innocence for good. The tension between angelic children’s voices and the erotic lyrics and yearning harmonies of the fairies music was even more unsettling than usual.

In other stagings, a counter-tenor Oberon can come across as rather camp, even if musically and sonically apt.  Not so here.  Oberon was intimidating and more than a little frightening.  He caned Puck savagely for his misdeeds (and made the Indian boy hold him down) and casually flicked the still hot ashes from his cigarette onto the lovers to cast his spell.

Once again, ENO fielded a mostly young, impressive cast.  However, it was the veteran Willard White who walked away with the show.  He brought such eloquence and nuance to the role of Bottom; his interpretation found all the wonder at the possibility of transformation that Britten put in Bottom’s music

Notable , too were the Oberon, Iestyn Davies, who a countertenor of exceptional projection and impact and the Lysander, tenor Allan Clayton, who has a voice of considerable heft and intensity. Conductor Leo Hussain delivered a reading of the score that matched the tone of the production – menacing, barbaric, and dangerous.

The best opera productions get the audience to pay close attention to a work they think they know by highlighting details in the music and text that may have gone unnoticed Dream at the ENO had me riveted.

Photos: Alistair Muir (Midsummer), Richard Hubert Smith (Two Boys).

For background on how these scenes fit into Herheim’s overall concept, the always insightful Intermezzo is a good place to start.

The letter scene:

Last moments of Lensky’s death, followed by the Polonaise:

Final scene:

And the whole thing may be watched below. (Note: “Verbinden met videoserver” means “Video loading,” so be patient.)

On the other hand, presumably the Met has prepared lighter touring versions of the sets for Lucia di Lammermoor. Upon the company’s return to New York these new pieces could be traded out for the massive and ungainly structures that have forced intermissions to run 45 minutes or longer for the bel canto work, so that’s a plus.

Photos: Koichi Miura/Met Opera (Dexter); Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera (Hytner).