In the fall of 2015, I ended a seven-year hiatus from live opera with two of Alban Berg’s staged works. Both were new productions—the first being William Kentridge’s palimpsestic abstraction of a Lulu at the Met, and a week later, David McVicar’s stark, Weimar Republic inspired Wozzeck at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Read more »
Highlights of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019-2020 season will include the company premiere of Glass’s Akhnaten featuring Anthony Roth Costanzo and first local Turandot of Anna Netrebko (not pictured), according the always intriguing Met Future Wiki. 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 »
“After five flops in a row, Mr. McVicar continues to win new assignments from the Met: in the 2017-2018 season alone, he’s booked for Bellini’s Norma and Puccini’s Tosca, with Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur down the line.” [Observer]
Unlike my friend Greg Freed, who entertainingly wrote of his ambivalence about seeing Il trovatore in a movie theater this season, I have embraced the Met Live in HD transmissions as a part of the modern operagoing experience.
Lilith. Pandora. Circe. Salome. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” Carmen. Brigid O’Shaughnessy: the eternal “femme fatale” still fascinates us.
Cher Public