Difficult people
Anna Pirozzi makes a welcome return to the Metropolitan Opera, but Turandot remains as thorny as ever.
John Relyea
24 pieces since 2005 — in 19 roles, at 7 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
24
pieces
19
roles
7
companies
22
years
By role
14 pieces as Metropolitan Opera — stats above show all coverage for John Relyea.
View all
Romantic hero
The main reason to see this revival is Benjamin Bernheim’s Duca.
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.
So damn bored
It’s nasty world, Shostakovich seems to say, where life alternates between boring and terrifying.
Resisting the recognizable
It was Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto, with its disorientingly deconstructive approach to its source text, that gave Brett Dean’s Hamlet its identity.
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?
Mark, missed
Thoughtless direction stifled the epic drama.
Poor wan Rusalka
The winter 2014 final run of the Met’s first/only Rusalka production (a new one is scheduled in a few seasons) seemed both a nod to the theater’s past and a hint of its future.
Destination moon
The legend of the mermaid is ancient, and recently scientists have theorized that these legends might have arisen when humans encountered marine mammals such as whales, seals, or sea lions.
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 […]
Three quarters of a crazy day
Our JJ‘s review of the Met’s revival of Le nozze di Figaro didn’t make it into today’s New York Post for reasons that you should be able to figure out once you’ve read the piece. At the suggestion of his editor, La Cieca is publishing it here.
point counterpoint
Cher public, who else but La Cieca brings you such in-depth arts coverage that you get not one but two reports from spies at the dress rehearsal of the Met’s new La Damnation de Faust ? After the jump, eyewitness accounts of the Lepagerie from Our Own Gualtier Maldè and Sanford.Â
Does a big voice need defending?
Our Own Little Stevie reflects on the Met’s new Macbeth. I’d like to admit a guilty pleasure of mine: I’ve secretly been waiting with a lot of anticipation for Maria Guleghina to sing in Macbeth and Norma this year. I have not told this to many people because it seems that the common expectation has […]
Di faci tuttavia splende il Costello!
Our Own Gualtier Maldè reflects on last night’s Met Lucia:The Met has often been accused and rightly so of ignoring young talent and waiting too long to hire up-and-coming new stars while hanging on to declining old favorites well past their sell-by date. Occasionally a promising new talent from the Young Artists Program will blossom […]