There are shows with iconic characters, and there are shows with iconic characters playing iconic characters. Read more »
Since it debuted in 2009, the Met’s Richard Eyre production of Bizet’s Carmen has beguiled audiences with its tense, vivid portrait of tormented love in Spain. Here, the old yarn about a corporal of dragoons who swaps reason, virginal girlfriend, and mama-love for a vampy seductress is reset in Civil War-era Seville. Read more »
This riotous opera transports the Oedipus tale to an apocalyptic 1980s London, plagued by police violence, racism, and socioeconomic decay. Intrepid composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s (Anna Nicole) 1988 breakthrough brilliantly combines cockney-accented profanity and irreverent drama with an audacious score and outstanding four-person cast. Eddy (tenor Alex Otterburn), our modern-day Oedipus, dreams of a better life. After hearing a fortune teller’s disturbing prediction, he resolves at all costs to avoid shagging his own mum (soprano Susan Bullock) and inadvertently killing his father (tenor Andrew Shore). But he is unable to outrun fate, landing in the prophetically maternal arms of an East End café manager (mezzo soprano Allison Cook). Thirty years later, Greek still resonates, offering an incisive, brash contemporary statement on accountability and family. Read more »
Jonas Kaufmann‘s Herbstreise to Little Old New York dominated the busy pages of October’s parterre box, boosting our total number of pageviews to nearly 400,000. After the jump, last months’ 10 most popular stories. Read more »
Sondra Radvanovsky changed my opinion of her through a single performance—I’ll never think of her the same way again; the power of her singing overwhelmed my previous impressions.
Sondra Radvanovsky takes up candle-toting duties tonight at 7:25 in a live broadcast of Tosca from the Met. Discuss!
On this day in 1883 the Metropolitan Opera House opened with Gounod’s Faust.
The Met is on it with something something woker than woke: a noirish psychodrama of a frigid hysteric who seeks redemption via Freudian analysis!
Cher Public