Our Own Joel Rozen is no longer Our Own, except of course in the most important sense that we will always adore him. The erstwhile parterre box scribe is now writing for the enemy The Metropolitan Opera. Read more »
Last night at the Met the main event—as planned, anyway—was the debut of the celebrated bass-baritone Wolfgang Koch as Scarpia. But another newcomer, this one jumping on on just a few hours’ notice, to my mind nabbed the show to herself. Read more »
Director Ivo van Hove, in collaboration with Flemish opera company Muziektheater Transparant, brings his trademark physicality and stripped-down aesthetic to bear on Leoš Janáček‘s “pathbreaking, emotionally raw song cycle” (The New York Times) Diary of One Who Disappeared. Featuring bravura performances by tenor Andrew Dickinson and mezzo-soprano Marie Hamard and additional music by composer Annelies Van Parys, BAM presents the US Premiere of this contemporary update April 4—6 at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House.
In 1917, Czech composer Janáček became obsessed with a married woman 40 years his junior. In the throes of despair, he penned more than 700 love letters and a haunting 22-part song cycle, about a village boy who falls in love with a Romany girl. Van Hove’s contemporary reimagining of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Disappeared paints a deeply affecting portrait of identity, infatuation, and ultimately, alienation. Read more »
It is not often the most memorable part of a production is the act-three ballet. Yet, in Darko Tresnjak’s production of Samson et Dalila (which opened at the Met last fall), Austin McCormack’s lascivious choreography outshone a tepid and tedious staging of Saint-Saëns’s old-testament epic. Read more »
A sunny opera for an overcast afternoon: the Met’s broadcast of Falstaff begins at 1:00 PM.
Suddenly in the middle of March 2019 the Metropolitan Opera realized that perhaps a few of the company’s multitudes of stagehands and technicians might be of the feminine persuasion.
The Metropolitan Opera delivers on the promise of Wagner’s Gesamtkunswerk in a revival of Robert Lepage’s Ring.
Let’s all sing “O terra addio” to the those crumbly styrofoam pharaoh toes.
Cher Public