Ritorna vincitrice
Elina Garanca is back at the Met for the first time since 2020 — her Amneris is, in a word, sensational.
Elina Garanca
54 pieces since 2008 — in 18 roles, at 8 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
54
pieces
18
roles
8
companies
19
years
By role
Role Amneris
Role Anita
Blood and Gorr
Massenet’s La Navarraise in a live performance featuring Rita Gorr as Anita and George Shirley as Araquil.
A tale of two Alagnas
In 1890 Cavalleria rusticana had taken the whole world by storm and in the next decade or so, hordes of composers, willing or unwillingly, jumped on the Verismo bandwagon. La navarraise (1894) is generally considered Jules Massenet’s homage to the genre, and for a long time the two works were often performed together. Emma Calvé, […]
Role Carmen
Stage beauty
>What does a great opera production do, and what does a bad production fail to do?
Pastia shrugged
The interpretation of Carmen by Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca has been much debated, many finding her cold and remote, others admiring her subtly smoldering quality. A new Deutsche Grammophon DVD documenting the Met’s January 16, 2010 performances offers us an opportunity to examine the gypsy in close-up. This is certainly not the lusty, passionate, mercurial Carmen […]
“L’etoile fait tout”
“Maybe this bold staging was a little overwrought. But when you have Ms. Garanca as Carmen, why not?” Anthony Tommasini offers an object lesson in the art of Criticism as Starfucking.
Role Cenerentola
Girl of the moment
It took the Metropolitan Opera decades to catch up with the rest of the world and finally stage La Cenerentola. Gioachino Rossini’s opera buffa, one of his most beloved and accomplished works, received its belated Met debut in 1997, amidst legitimate suspicions that the new production was less a genuine desire to add a belcanto […]
Role Dalila
Shorn yesterday
For opening night 2018, the Met offered the creaky but appealing biblical epic Samson et Dalila, presumably as a vehicle for Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna.
Do you believe in Zajick?
“Trove Thursday” gives a preview of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila with a broadcast featuring an unexpected temptress—Dolora Zajick—who will celebrate the 30th anniversary of her Met debut next month.
Role Didon
This means war
Considering the size and the logistics for staging Les Troyens, every new production of Berlioz’s epic masterpiece is a special event.
Role Eboli
C’est une vraie voix
Don Carlos returns to the Opéra National de Paris and it’s an unusually happy occasion
Role Giovanna Seymour
Anna squared
I’ve been a big fan of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena since I first heard it on recording and have always felt that it deserved a definitive recorded performance. Here’s a brief tour of why this hasn’t happened. There’s the Bible, also known as the live Scala relay with Callas and Simionato and musical cuts so egregious […]
Role Judith
Parable of the prodigious son
I’m old enough to remember when Yannick Nézet-Séguin could do no wrong.
Role Kundry
Du weisst, wo du mich wiederfinden kannst!
And what a luxury it is to experience this musically outstanding Parsifal with a cast of this caliber!
Role Léonor de Guzman
What women want
Psychology is encoded in the composer’s vocal lines more than his librettist’s words.
Role Marguerite
Faust class
Michael Spyres as Faust, despite a few flickers of indisposition, was nearly ideal.
Keeper of the flame
Elina Garanca’s glorious Marguerite transformed La Damnation de Faust into the Met’s first essential must-see of the year.
Role mezzo-soprano
Unheard prayers
Our Own Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin gets serious for a moment, or rather for about an hour and a half, with a performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis led by Christian Thielemann.
Role Nicklausse, Carmen
Gualtier tells “Tales”
So, I was asking my friends with Met Opera insider connections about the new Hoffmann production directed by Bartlett Sher. Seemingly conceived under an unlucky star, this production first lost two of its four heroines when Anna Netrebko decided not sing Olympia and Giulietta but kept Antonia and also Stella, leaving the dramaturgy somewhat lopsided.
Role Octavian
Mit leichtem Herz und leichten Händen
Der Rosenkavalier (on Blu-ray and DVD) is from the Met HD broadcast which also happened to be the final performance of the run, becoming a true souvenir of the farewells of its two leading ladies.
The frailty of everything earthly
If everything you see is great, you are either new to opera or chronically easy to please.
Through a glass vaguely
Any production of Der Rosenkavalier that can transform the usually excruciating first half of the third act into a hilarious romp already has my vote.
American Beauty Rosenkavalier
[La Cieca is delighted to introduce a new reviewer, @scazzasofija.] I found Rosenkavalier (Met, Oct. 13) to be mostly sublime. My quibbles come from a preference for Kleiber’s tempos. I found that de Waart was waving his arms as fast as he could for the beginning, but I think the prelude and up until the […]
Role Sara
Screen queen
This season’s Met Donizetti Tudor Trilogy concluded with Roberto Devereux, given its penultimate performance by HD transmission Saturday, April 16. It is good to see these works finally given here; they are too important, too crucial a part of the operatic repertory to have been ignored for as long as they have.
Role Sarah
I want your Essex
During its first-ever Roberto Devereux Thursday evening one felt transported back to the Volpe years: four of the Met’s biggest stars shining in an opulent (if occasionally perverse) but reassuringly non-challenging production paid for by Sybil B. Harrington.
Role Sesto
The quality of mercy
“Trove Thursday” offers Mozart’s late opera seria in a Paris “pirate” featuring the high-voltage diva-duo of Anna Caterina Antonacci and Elina Garanca.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
