The man behind the mask
Recently your doyenne engaged in an email-based interview with David Alden, director of the Met’s new production of Un ballo in maschera, opening on Thursday.
Karita Mattila
80 pieces since 2006 — in 20 roles, at 10 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
80
pieces
20
roles
10
companies
21
years
By role
Role Amelia
Role Arabella
Someday she’ll come along, the girl I love
In Richard Strauss’s Arabella, the heroine is consumed with finding the right man—der Richtige—but who is the right Arabella?
Role Ariadne
Females on the beach
Karita Mattila is a gift to this planet.
Role Countess Madeleine
Everyone’s gone to the moon
The Met’s recent Ariadne auf Naxos and Elektra combo left me wanting more and more Richard Strauss, so Trove Thursday offers a complete Capriccio with Jonas Kaufmann (his one-and-only Flamand) and Christopher Maltman vying for Soile Isokoski.
Role Donna Elvira
Donna Anna and the Dynamos
The new Opera News section of OPERA magazine already seems to be getting smaller, but the March issue features a long interview with Carol Vaness about Donna Anna.
Lady on demand
If you had told me 20 years ago that at some point in the future I would have over 550 of the Metropolitan Opera’s performances, audio and video, at my command with the touch of a button I would say my eulogy had just been read and I’d been taken to my reward.
Role Emilia Marty
Immortal beloved
Janácek’s Makropulos Case has only chalked up thirteen performances in three previous runs at the Met and will have just five more this season. Try to catch at least one.
Role Foreign Princess
I’m never gonna dance again
A starry cast is hampered by Christof Loy‘s dour production of Rusalka in Barcelona
Role Herodias
Coups de theatre
This month, both the Paris Opéra and the Opéra-Comique are mounting seminal works about unhinged anti-heroines who meet their downfall after falling head-over-heels for an unavailable, deeply unattainable man – Salome, in the case of the Opéra; and Armide, in the case of the Opéra-Comique.
Role Jenufa
Reconcilable differences
Cameron Kelsall reports on a transcendent Jenufa from the Cleveland Orchestra
Role Kostelnicka
Bye bye baby
Following last week’s performances in Cleveland, Ronnie Banerjee compares six different versions of the Kostelnicka’s monologue from Leos Janácek’s Jenufa for “Perspectives on an Aria”
Rock, star
The centerpiece of Janácek’s Jenufa was the performance of Karita Mattila as the murderous Kostelnicka.
Stone cold killer
This may be Karita Mattila’s greatest role.
All about my stepmother
“Trove Thursday” presents Sena Jurinac‘s radiant portrayal of Janacek’s Jenufa opposite the implacable Kostelnicka of Martha Mödl.
Role La Principessa
Three ages of woman
Asmik Grigorian’s scorching turn in Il trittico in Paris has Nigel Wilkinson wondering, ‘what is it that makes Americans so weepy?’
Role Lisa
Final curtain
“Trove Thursday” pays tribute to Dmitri Hrovostovsky with a broadcast of his final new role, Rubinstein’s The Demon.
Role Madame de Croissy
Star-crossed
For more than 40 years, the magnificent opening image from Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites has served as an icon for the Met.
Like a prayer
It was quite a pleasure—a privilege, really—to see John Dexter’s legendary production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.
Role Marie
Wir arme Leut!
Trove Thursday presents that perennial holiday favorite Berg’s Wozzeck.
Role Ortrud
Bleak house
Karita Mattila’s Ortrud, taut conducting, and a remarkable debut emerge from Richard Jones’s dreary Lohengrin Konzept.
Role Plotina
Murder on the orientation express
Rufus Wainwright is determined to offer a spectacle and that intention overrides all other considerations.
Role Salome
Surfacing: an appreciation in 20 fragments
I struggle to articulate the notion of an erotics of art.
salome (met) 9/23/2008
I was there in the house and it was a good night. I still think that Mattila and the production were fresher in 2004 with a wider range of colors and dynamics. However, she didn’t sound frayed or at the end of her rope. Some of the louder high notes can get a blanched quality […]
Role Sieglinde
The hipster demigoddess
If Das Rheingold is an opera about infinitude, the illusory idea that the world is large enough to satisfy all of our desires, passions, and lusts, Die Walküre is an opera about scarcity.
Role Tosca
Bringing up Bondy
The more ignorant segments of the public and the critical establishment continue to shout praise to David McVicar‘s torpid Tosca as the greatest triumph of the reactionary since the Bourbon Restoration.
E avanti a lui russava tutta Roma
The Met got exactly what it asked for: a safely opulent, resolutely unchallenging Tosca that was far from shabby or little but couldn’t have been less shocking
Three for the show
Luc Bondy’s Tosca returned to the Met on Wednesday night with an entirely new set of principals and conductor. The new trio of principal singers, all making local role debuts, could not redirect and redesign the production but they could allow their individual talents to outshine their surroundings.
Tosca’s dress
So the question was raised (on opera-l, actually, but La Cieca doesn’t mind discussing it in more downmarket venues): in Luc Bondy‘s production of Tosca, Karita Mattila appears in the third act in an entirely new outfit, a sort of tailored trenchcoat of dark leather-like fabric, but whatever she’s wearing, isn’t is a mistake?
IV on HD
Four of the cher public caught yesterday’s HD presentation of Tosca and have agreed to share their impressions with La Cieca and the rest: “The death of Puccini’s Tosca was much exaggerated, in fact it did not take place.” “After about 34 years of going to the opera, I don’t think I’ve ever left a […]
First fragmentary reports begin to trickle in
[SPOILER ALERT! MAY CONTAIN DETAILS YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE BEFORE YOU ATTEND THE PRODUCTION!]
Role Tove
Sunset, Sunrise
This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson from breast cancer.
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!
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).
