Mahler if ya hear me
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, leading the Met Orchestra, and Joyce DiDonato continue their exploration of Mahler at Carnegie Hall.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
121 pieces since 2008 — at 7 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
121
pieces
7
companies
19
years
54 pieces as Metropolitan Opera — stats above show all coverage for Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
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Not in Kansas anymore
Christopher Corwin speaks to rising bass-baritone Le Bu about his journey from Yancheng, China to the Met (with a stop in Wichita) and what important roles await him.
Dream a little dream of me
Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego enchants and surprises despite the Disnified treatment of its subject matter.
Tunnel vision
Lise Davidsen, Michael Spyres, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin are astonishing in Tristan und Isolde at the Met, while Yuval Sharon‘s new production is anything but.
Faith in their hands shall snap in two
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Erste Brautnacht
Nearly three years after the premiere of François Girard’s Lohengrin at the Met, Parterre Box looks back at the production with a duet from Piotr Beczala and Elena Stikhina.
Storybored
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was, somehow, a fun night at the opera—just not one that felt specifically operatic.
Many happy returns
The Met’s mostly successful revivals of The Queen of Spades and La bohème showcase the returns of Sonya Yoncheva and Corinne Winters
Strawberry blonde forever
The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble’s Das Lied von der Erde skirts the sublime at Carnegie Hall
Little girls get bigger every day
Elza van den Heever and Peter Mattei (and the stage elevator) elevate an assertive, if not definitive, new Salome at the Met
Ritorna vincitrice
Elina Garanca is back at the Met for the first time since 2020 — her Amneris is, in a word, sensational.
Can you dig it?
I had been hopeful that 2024 would end, if not on a high note, then one that was at least in tune.
Trick mirror
A recent conversation with a friend who has loved Die Frau ohne Schatten for twice as long as I have been alive revealed that we both had some unresolved questions about the plot.
On an evening in Roma
After an uneven gala performance of Tosca on Tuesday, I’m not sure what the Met means by “celebrating Puccini.”
Thoughts on La Gioconda: the others
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
Character is destiny
La forza del destino concluded its run at the Metropolitan Opera with a significant cast change.
A fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes
It’s not hard not to feel jaded about Romeo and Juliet.
Destiny’s child
While you may need to bring along your Dramamine, the Met’s new production of La forza del destino, does—eventually—spin fast enough to achieve escape velocity.
Let the river run
In its Met premier, neither a talented cast nor some beautiful musical moments were enough to make Florencia feel new or vital.
Tremens factus sum ego
One got a sense that the Met and the maestro directed most of the rehearsal and preparation toward the opening night premiere of the Heggie opus
Nun of a kind
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
A winner and new ‘Champion’
To paraphrase Terence Blanchard’s Champion, what makes an opera an opera?
A hole new world
Here’s an update for those keeping up with the Lohengrin casting sweepstakes at the Met.
A whiter shade of grail
It seems that François Girard has been watching a little too much Star Wars lately. His new production of Lohengrin, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera Sunday afternoon, reduced Wagner’s opera to a knockoff space opera, full of hackneyed sci-fi tropes and B-rated futurist apologue.
Unhappy ‘Hours’
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
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.
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?
(Yet more) Thoughts on ‘Don Carlos’: Coronations and finales
In any case, we are now in the Queen’s garden of the Palace in Madrid. It is the day before the coronation of King Philip. Coronation? What coronation?
A certain theatrical precision
Sondra Radvanovsky was a force of nature as Tosca on Thursday night at the Met.
In my very own private hell
No, we don’t really need another “Orpheus” opera. Or, rather, we don’t need this one.
Straight to hell
November in New York hosts two premieres dedicated to mythology’s greatest musician, which prompts Trove Thursday to present a vintage Monteverdi L’Orfeo with Judith Raskin and Gérard Souzay conducted by Leopold Stokowski (!) and a recent HIP London broadcast of Luigi Rossi’s L’Orfeo.
Playing with ‘Fire’
With composer Terence Blanchard and librettist Kasi Lemmons‘ incendiary Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the Met makes long overdue history and Will Liverman ascends to superstardom.
Great and happy, but not quite live
This was a great and happy event, but it wasn’t so much a musical one.
Forging forward, instruments in hand
Whatever you think of Angela Gheorghiu, she epitomizes a star sound, the kind of voice that’s recognizable within three seconds, and she definitely knows her way around a performance.
Quand votre sœur Charlotte est là!
Trove Thursday previews Massenet’s Werther—due to return next month at the Met—with a 1984 Paris performance starring two marvelous protagonists, Tatiana Troyanos and Alain Vanzo.
Queen of the New Year
Although the gold glitter cannons detonated at the end of the act were an ostentatious reminder that this was a celebration of the new year, it seemed that the only words on anyone’s lips as the audience filed out of the theater were “Viva Netrebko!”
Every snarl and shimmer
Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra reigned supreme at the opening night of Wozzeck on Friday evening, rendering every snarl and shimmer of Berg’s score with gripping intensity.
Orientation
There were plenty of Turan-do’s and only a few Turandon’ts at the Met’s Turandot Sunday afternoon.
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.
House of the setting sun
When a work is named for its lovers one might legitimately expect that pair to dominate its performance but in my experience that is never the case with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
Shrieking violet
Diana Damrau‘s performance as Violetta was the work of a very ordinary artist, one susceptible to vocal flubs, poor intonation, and an all too banal approach operatic performance.
The mania event
Christine Goerke‘s puzzling high register has become an increasingly troubling aspect of her singing. One just never knew what was going to come out from one moment to the next.
Fifty shades of Grail
The Met’s magnificent revival which opened on Monday night with a superb cast under the mesmerizing leadership of Yannick Nézet-Séguin nearly converted me into a devoted Parsifal disciple.
Gewitter und Sturm
The wild tempest that whipped and drenched the audience as it exited the Met after Tuesday’s season premiere of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer mirrored the finer features of the evening.
The sprite in you
Today’s Rusalka video overview covers filmed performances of Dvorák’s opera since 2010.
A whiter shade of pale
While the celebrity-studded, expensively-dressed audience gathered for the gala opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2015-2016 season seemed genuinely enthralled by Monday evening’s performance of Otello, it was more likely swept away by the power of Verdi’s genius than by Bartlett Sher’s puzzling, inert new production.
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.
Three nights in Paris
“Oh to be young and going to Paris for the first time,” exclaimed an elderly gentleman who donned his best sweatervest for a concert at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival this past August.
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.
Experiment in error
It is, as Noel Coward remarked, astonishing how potent cheap music is. According to Brockway and Weinstock’s World of Opera, Gounod’s Faust was performed, after a rather lackluster debut in 1859, a thousand times inParis at the Opera between 1869 and 1894—a gobsmacking average of once every nine days.
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 […]
Des grandeurs de ce monde
Don Carlo is truly a grand opera, Verdi’s biggest, no matter if it’s the four or five act version. It is a bitch.
Been there, Don that
After a rather long afternoon at the Met, a member of the cher public writes: “The Don Carlo final dress was worth catching.” Our spy has more to say after the jump.
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!
