Standard fare threatened to dominate the final weekend of February at the Met: a routinely-cast revival of Cav & Pag plus two recent productions by the house’s favorite Eyre-head. But then there were also two extraordinary opportunities to indulge in divadienst of the “An(n)a-in-excelsis” genus—Saturday offered another chance, announced only 24 hours earlier, to sample Ana Maria Martinez’s unexpected Butterfly, then Sunday afternoon brought Anna Netrebko’s exceptional, sold-out sui generis all-Russian recital. Read more »
Our Own JJ (not pictured) writes in the New York Observer, “The combination of the Metropolitan Opera’s opening night—one of the most glamorous social events of the year, in theory at least—and a new production of Le Nozze di Figaro—which is, after all, about a wedding—should result in a doubly gala event. So it’s twice as disappointing that Monday night’s performance of the Mozart masterpiece turned into a four-hour fizzle.” (Photo: Ken Howard, Metropolitan Opera)
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On the evidence of the trailer for the Baden Baden Festival, the upcoming new Met co-production of Manon Lescaut by Sir Richard Eyre (and who better to direct a German/American production of an Italian opera set in France and Louisiana than a Brit?) looks to be a fairly straightforward, if drab, update to circa 1940. Read more »
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