Die Frist ist Glum
This Holländer offers neither a clear narrative vision for the work nor a sense of turbocharged drama; it simply sits on the Met’s cavernous stage as a dull gray mass.
Metropolitan Opera
The mothership and mecca of opera in America—and home base for Parterre Box.
Distinctly human
In the five short years that I’ve been in New York, I have seen that crusty old Franco Zeffirelli production of La bohème more times than I can count on one hand. And there are certainly times when that peeling mise-en-scène really shows its age.
Crazy extremes
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
Nervous system theater
Like a sommelier of male entitlement, Peter Mattei paired with precision moves from a wide-ranging vocabulary of gesture.
A hole new world
Here’s an update for those keeping up with the Lohengrin casting sweepstakes at the Met.
Diva moment
Angela Meade, reportedly flown in at the very last minute to take on the role of Norma, absolutely triumphed, pulling out all the stops to deliver a commanding performance that should, indeed, go down in history.
Radically giddy
Verdi’s Falstaff is a brilliantly written opera: funny, with a complex ability to operate across minutely shifting registers of farce and lyricism. It needs, ideally, a production and cast capable of executing both comedy and drama, irony and sincerity—often concurrently. In its current Met revival, happily, Falstaff has everything it needs.
Touched by a fallen Angel
Angel Blue‘s refulgent, lush soprano blooms as Violetta’s vocal lines broaden and soar.
Zero gravitas
On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
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.
The Metropolitan Opera’s 2023-2024 season announcment
Six contemporary operas, including four Metropolitan premieres, headline the company’s upcoming season, which was announced today at noon.
Pragmatism and ideology
It doesn’t get more classic than John Dexter‘s Dialogues des Carmélites.
Rebranding the Met
A quick survey of the Met website shows wide swaths of available seats for the upcoming performances of La traviata and L’elisir d’amore. Only new works like The Hours and Fire Shut Up in My Bones have been achieving sold-out houses.
Poison of interest
Following new productions of Tosca in 2017, Adriana Lecouvreur in 2018, and the Anna Netrebko-led Puccini orgy of 2019, New Year’s Eve at the Met has come to signify that verismo, as this school tends to be known, is still kicking.
Rachvelishvili recedes!
Mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili has canceled all her remaining Met performances of Aida due to illness.
Long live the Queen!
BREAKING: The Metropolitan Opera’s website is back online!
Alone in the world
Step aside, Texas: “Everything is bigger at Aida” is the motto of the Met’s second attempt at retiring Sonja Frisell’s colossal production.
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.
Don’t mask, don’t tell
The Metropolitan Opera and other classical music venue are dropping their mask requirements for audience members.
Take the long way Rome
David McVicar’s 2017 production of Tosca returned to the Met on Tuesday night, with an able and watchable, if not transcendent cast.
Ocean, thou mighty monster
Michael Spyres’s nobly moving Idomeneo wasn’t just a bravura triumph: singing strongly throughout, he brought more colors to his portrayal of the tortured king than I had experienced from others in the Ponnelle production.
So damn bored
It’s nasty world, Shostakovich seems to say, where life alternates between boring and terrifying.
How do you solve a problem like ‘Medea’?
Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music. The lack of lush beauty was no deficit in depicting Medea’s jealousy and vengeful rage.
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).
