Def Man Glance
Since 2010 I’ve been reading nothing but horror being heaped upon the Met’s new Ring. It’s been like a cross between a cruise ship size buffet spread of internet snarking and a slasher film re-cast with music critics.
Eric Owens
58 pieces since 2006 — in 26 roles, at 13 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
58
pieces
26
roles
13
companies
21
years
By role
Wotan 5
Porgy 4
Alberich 3
Hagen 2
Jaufré Rudel 2
Montesecco 1
Wotan/Wanderer 1
Water Goblin 1
Vodnik 1
The King 1
Stephen Kumalo 1
Raimondo 1
Philippe II 1
Philippe 1
Orest 1
Nekrotzar 1
Mefistofele 1
Macbeth 1
Jailer 1
Hunding 1
Hercules 1
Gualtiero 1
Grendel 1
Filippo II 1
Emile Griffith (older self) 1
Capellio 1
By company
Metropolitan Opera 17
Lyric Opera of Chicago 7
Washington National Opera 3
Carnegie Hall 1
Chicago Symphony Orchestra 1
Dutch National Opera 1
Glimmerglass Festival 1
LA Opera 1
Minnesota Orchestra 1
New York Philharmonic 1
Opera Orchestra of New York 1
San Francisco Opera 1
War Memorial Opera House 1
Role Alberich
The Sky People have sent us a message
Great expectations awaited the Met Opera’s new production of Das Rheingold, staged by the ambitious Canadian director Robert Lepage, and rightly so. With a 45-ton set carrying a $16 million price tag, a world-renowned cast, and maestro James Levine celebrating his 40th anniversary on the podium, who wouldn’t be on the edge of his seat as […]
Circling the Ring
Crossing the Plaza and seeing two thousand chairs gleaming in the gloaming with rain slick and thoughts of the evening that might have been for many. Past the ticket takers and the buzz of voices, the gawkers lined up on the stairs to see the celebs, I wend my way through and up and up. […]
Role Capellio
Star, crossed
The key to enjoying Bellini’s I Capuleti e Montechi is to do a hard factory reset and reformat your brain to forget all other works based on Romeo and Juliet.
Role Emile Griffith (older self)
A winner and new ‘Champion’
To paraphrase Terence Blanchard’s Champion, what makes an opera an opera?
Role Filippo II
Family values
A regular day in 2018 Washington, D.C., or Verdi’s Don Carlo?
Role Grendel
Working on the Whale-Road
Our left coast correspondent Baritenor reports: I would not call Grendel an opera for the faint-hearted. The libretto is well-written, but the score jumps to both ends of the operatic spectrum, going from lyrical to modernistic to lyrical again in the blink of an eye. Think Benjamin Britten on crack, if you will, only with […]
Role Gualtiero
The Lady Eve
For nearly 70 years, New York City was the world capital of concert opera thanks first to the American Opera Society, then to Eve Queler’s Opera Orchestra of New York.
Role Hagen
Something With a ‘Ring’ to It
Cycle II represented an embarrassment of musical riches.
The end is the beginning of the end
At the Metropolitan Opera’s Götterdämmerung on Saturday afternoon, the fires which consumed the Gods burned lukewarm.
Role Hercules
Shirt tale
Among symbolic classical tropes, one of my favorites (perhaps because only another classicist will understand it) is Nessus’ Shirt, an emblem of glory (a promotion, say, or an expensive luxury) that destroys you.
Role Hunding
Consistently enthralling
To conclude its triumphant season, last week the Met Orchestra performed its annual Carnegie Hall concerts under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and once again performed superbly.
Role Jailer
Pardon my dust
David Lang’s Prisoner of the State, which was premiered on Thursday night by the New York Philharmonic, places the issue of mass incarceration front and center, foregrounding the violence of the prison system, both physical and psychological.
Role Jaufré Rudel
There arose such a clatter
With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
Chanson d’amour
Much like Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which launched the Met’s 2016-2017 season, Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin is an opera about love and death.
Role Macbeth
“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece”
I have found myself truly bewildered by some of the online reviews of the Glimmerglass production of Verdi’s Macbeth.
Role Mefistofele
Diabolical variations
Whenever I encounter Eric Owens, he’s plotting to conquer the universe.
Role Montesecco
Three-way
An ambitious and Wagner-smitten Ruggero Leoncavallo wrote his rarely heard opera I Medici (Historical Action in Four Acts) as the beginning of what he planned as “an epic poem in the form of a historical trilogy.” Taking his lead from the Ring, Leoncavallo called his planned trilogy Crepesculum, an homage to the Italian translation of […]
Role Nekrotzar
Theatrical Ligeti, Dramatically Realized (TL;DR)
Look, this is a very special piece of music for me. You were twenty once, right? You were self-righteous. You had your musical heroes, and your mind was being remolded every fifteen minutes or so by a rapid succession of new experiences that challenged your notions of what music could do.
Role Orest
Bleak house
The haunted Mycenae of Patrice Chéreau’s enthralling production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra had seized its viewers in an unrelenting vise that never relaxed even at its quietly shattering conclusion.
Role Philippe
Back to black
When was the last time the Metropolitan Opera mounted a new production that was musically outstanding yet the direction and/or design mostly sucked?
Role Philippe II
We’ll always have Paris (or maybe not)
The revival of Don Carlo(s) which opened on November 3 restored the translated Italian text and the cut 1882 four-act revision not seen at the Met since Rudolf Bing’s last season in 1972.
Role Porgy
All I cared about was Bess
Opera’s latest superstar, Angel Blue, in a compleat and enthralling portrayal, gloriously sung and rivetingly acted.
Wintertime, and the living is easy
Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward’s 1935 “folk” opera, graced the stage of Dutch National Opera for the first time last month, and it was resounding success from start to finish.
Madness on the moors!
The new cast at the Met suggested an alliterative retitling of Lucia di Lammermoor was needed—perhaps Lost Loonies in Love or its Italian equivalent?
Porgy on the bay
A new DVD of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess features an enjoyable live performance from the San Francisco Opera from June of 2009.
Role Raimondo
No heather on the hill: ‘Lucia’ in LA
LA Opera sent out an email warning that the production “contains depictions of blood, violence, and drug use, as well as strobe lights and a gunshot effect in Act III.”
Role Stephen Kumalo
Play well
Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s 1949 musicalization of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country has found a tentative home on the opera stage.
Role The King
Putting it together
Riccardo Muti’s vision of Aida’s score largely emerged as one of subtlety, musicality, and restraint.
Role Vodnik
Sleeping with the fishes
With a cast of stellar singers and uneven direction by Mary Zimmerman, Dvorák’s Rusalka debuts in a new production at the Metropolitan Opera.
Role Water Goblin
Water, logged
So, how excited are you to read another piece about the Mary Zimmerman Rusalka?
Role Wotan
Singing through
A near-full house attended the Jessye Norman Memorial Celebration at the Met on Sunday afternoon, the auditorium packed with family, friends, colleagues, and fans of the late soprano, who passed away on September 30 of this year.
Girls on horseback
It’s a fairly traditional post-Patrice-Chereau Ring, set during the Industrial Revolution.
Wow factor
The second installment of Lyric’s Ring Cycle proved an evening of glorious singing, moving drama, great conducting and orchestral playing.
In the River Rhine. In it.
It is always a pleasure to hear a great orchestra take on a major score that might sound half-muffled emerging from the pit of an opera house.
A new beginning
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2016-17 season got off to an exciting start on Saturday night with Wagner’s Das Rheingold.
Role Wotan/Wanderer
First action hero
Director David Pountney and his splendid designers have brought Lyric Opera of Chicago a visually spectacular Siegfried full of daring ideas.