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.
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Pick a little, talk a little
Following the successful launch of the new regular feature The Talk of the Town in January, the team at the box is inviting contributions for a new quarter of operatic potpourri.
Robert Carsen‘s legendary production of Eugene Onegin finally arrives in San Francisco.
With the phenomenal cast that stacked Paris Opera’s production of I Capuleti e i Montecchi , it was easy to overlook the quirks of Bellini’s opera and get lost in the pleasures of glorious bel canto singing.
My impression was of a very fine singer performing a role that was slightly too large for him.
On the first viewing of this Idomeneo, with a cast clad mostly in military khaki green set against a green sky, the eye starts to tire from the dullness of the surroundings.
It may have taken 28 years to see Robert Carsen’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the U. S., but it was worth waiting for.
At last the future plans of America’s Most Beloved Semi-Retired People’s Diva have been revealed!
Our selected Rosenkavalier video overview closes out the 20th-century selections, crosses the millennial mark, and includes the first of our performances to depart from the opera’s prescribed 18th-century setting.
“Time is a strange thing,” the lady observes, to a young man who cannot begin to understand what she is talking about.
While some once-popular Met operas have fallen into neglect in the past quarter century, Rusalka has returned regularly since its 1993 premiere.
After five flops in a row, Mr. McVicar continues to win new assignments from the Met.
Certain operas are better in theory than practice.
“Oubliez le XVIIIè siècle. A l’Opéra Comique, Platée s’installe sur les podiums d’une fashion week parisienne!”
“German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is a household name; 18th-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau isn’t.”
How, then, to explain the perplexing performance last Friday night of Falstaff, Mr. Levine’s first new production since his return?
What better way to spend a lazy Friday afternoon in midsummer than watching a webcast of Rigoletto?
