Les feuilles mortes
Lyric Opera of Chicago concluded its 2016-17 season with a spellbinding and wonderfully sung production of Tchaikovsky’s familiar Eugene Onegin.
Robert Carsen
81 pieces since 2010 — at 15 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
81
pieces
15
companies
17
years
The sprite in you
Today’s Rusalka video overview covers filmed performances of Dvorák’s opera since 2010.
At sunset
Sunday afternoon’s all-Richard Strauss concert served as a de facto commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the debut of Renée Fleming, long one of the house’s biggest stars.
Venice to society
I was, to my astonishment, quite bored.
Ihre hochfürstliche Gnaden, die Frau Fürstin Feldmarschall!
God, I love that photo of Lisa della Casa. She can sing, too!
After dark
The Canadian Robert Carsen would appear to love the theater to the point of fixation.
Everytime we say goodbye
Gather around while I play Ghost of New Year’s Eve past!
Inherit the wind
Jean-Philippe Rameau was nearly 80 when he composed his final masterpiece Les Boréades, but it had to wait over 200 years to reach the stage.
Myths, matched
“CanCon”, or Canadian Content, is always a concern in Canadian cultural discourse.
Out here in the dark
This is the tenth season of the Met’s HD broadcasts, not that I would know it.
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.
Garden party
Many large opera companies these days host valuable young artist programs dedicated to helping singers negotiate the difficult transition between leaving the conservatory and becoming full-time performing artists.
The devil is in the details
Certain operas are better in theory than practice.
No business like snow business
Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is his masterwork and its themes of social convention and unrequited longing surely struck a deep chord in a composer who, in late 19th century Russia, was gay and had to conduct himself carefully.
Platée du jour
What must have raced through the mind of the none-too-comely Spanish Infanta when she learned that the opera to be performed during the celebrations for her 1745 wedding to the French Dauphin revolved around the comeuppance of an ugly yet vain water nymph tricked into believing Jupiter was her ardent suitor?
The Met: Can it be saved?
Short answer: yes. But let’s begin by dismissing the a blatant canard. One thing that the Metropolitan Opera does not need to do is to scale back the number of performances in a season.
He is big
Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, is exuberantly inventive, bubbling and roiling with ideas the 79-year-old composer was too impatient to develop.
Diabolical variations
Whenever I encounter Eric Owens, he’s plotting to conquer the universe.
Tonight or Neva
Last night, the Met opened the 2013-14 season with a handsome, fairly conservative new production of Eugene Onegin by Deborah Warner that replaces the handsome, fairly conservative one by Robert Carsen. (The trend is clear.)
Female on the beach
Christian Thielemann has proved himself to be the preeminent Strauss interpreter of the current generation of conductors and he’s in striking form here.
Backstory
In August 1845 Alexandre Dumas fils ended his brief but passionate affair with Parisian courtesan Marie Duplessis. He sent her a bitter letter that is often quoted in program notes about La Traviata.
Schoolboy crush
Handel’s 1711 opera Rinaldo was the first Italian opera ever written specifically for the London stage.
Blonde item
This year, I attended one of Natalie Dessay‘s only fully-sung Traviatas at the Met.
Sunday in the park with Tannhäuser
Certain contemporary opera directors have taken to portraying Wagner protagonists as visual artists to better illuminate the characters’ moral and aesthetic struggles.
By Adriel
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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).