parterre box

You may remember, gentle readers, that last year about this time Peter Gelb decided to enter into an unholy alliance with Target to benefit their mountainous number of opera loving customers by pre-releasing two Met performances exclusively in their fine emporiums. A couple weeks ago, by sheer accident, I caught a posting on Facebook by the Met Gift Shop on a new release topic that was then withdrawn an hour later. When I asked for clarification I was pointed to my (not so local) Target for these performances of La fanciulla del West and Il trovatore.   Read more »

For all his historical importance Christoph Willibald Gluck remains one of the least known and performed of the great opera composers.  Although he wrote nearly 50 operas, he’s primarily remembered for just one—his ground-breaking Orfeo ed Euridice, the first so-called “reform” opera—one often performed and recorded in adaptations the composer would scarcely recognize. Read more »

The Underworld as corporate boardroom, Pluto a “suit,” the damned a bunch of clerks tapping away at laptops. When the lyre of Orpheus is heard (it never is seen, and it sounds like a recorder), rose petals turn up in hair or sleeves or pockets. The king of the dark realm is prepared to do almost anything to get rid of the intruder, even give him back his late bride (on conditions). The Maenads are a couple of riotous club ladies in bouffant ’dos and over-the-top pastel outfits, biting off a little piece of Mahler’s—sorry, Telemann’s.

Rebecca Taichman’s busy staging of Telemann’s 1726 opera Orpheus (or, Die wunderbare Beständigkeit der Liebe, The Wonderful Constancy of Love), for the New York City Opera, played in David Zinn’s spare sets and colorful costumes, tends to modern stage clichés but at least none of it gets in the way of, or unduly clutters, the familiar tale of the greatest musician of classical myth.   Read more »