A hole new world
Here’s an update for those keeping up with the Lohengrin casting sweepstakes at the Met.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
121 pieces since 2008 — at 7 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
121
pieces
7
companies
19
years
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.
All quirk and no play
Perhaps the quirkiest of Mahler’s nine symphonies, the Fourth fits nicely with Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s somewhat idiosyncratic style.
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.
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.
Shining ‘Hours’
Dramaturgically, The Hours is a mixed bag: I wouldn’t discard it, but I would want to fix it. But simply as an evening of gorgeous music and singing, it’s cordon bleu.
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.
A dream deferred
In an era when the Metropolitan Opera cannot cast an Aida, Trovatore or Forza consistently, New Amsterdam Opera managed to cast large, attractive and fully technically capable voices in all the cruelly demanding principal roles in I Vespri Siciliani!
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.
Cradle song
While seasonally-awkward streams of Messiah abound, Trove Thursday turns instead to Berlioz’s exquisite L’Enfance du Christ from francophone forces including Stéphanie d’ Oustrac, Bernard Richter, Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Nicolas Testé (for once, sans sa femme).
Halfway to heaven
All in all, Mahler’s ethereal evocation of the natural world, and the world beyond our own, is becoming old hat.
From the HIP
We are in the midst of a titanic Beethoven onslaught prompted by the unstoppable need to commemorate the composer’s upcoming 250th birthday.
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.
For unto us a child is born
Each year, when I take in a performance of Messiah by the Philadelphia Orchestra as part of my own holiday tradition, I hope it will spark some new and exciting feeling inside of me, or offer a new way of looking at the musical drama as a whole.
Wir arme Leut!
Trove Thursday presents that perennial holiday favorite Berg’s Wozzeck.
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).