Lise Davidsen, Michael Spyres, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin are astonishing in Tristan und Isolde at the Met, while Yuval Sharon‘s new production is anything but.
Joyce DiDonato makes the most of Kevin Puts‘s trite new Emily Dickinson monodrama.
Richard Lynn bravely asks what we’re hoping to get out of the continued Peter Gelb-bashing — and whether our expectations of him have ever been fair
In its first go-around in November 2022, Kevin Puts’s The Hours (libretto by Greg Pierce based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the screenplay for the Stephen Daldry’s 2002 film was a box office bullseye for the Metropolitan Opera.
Although somewhat flawed, Days of Wine and Roses draws from the same musical language that made Piazza so instantly distinctive, and it features a specificity that I noticed in Adam Guettel’s earlier breakthrough work, Floyd Collins.
Renée Fleming arrived at Carnegie Hall on May 31 with something to prove.
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
This was by far my most satisfying experience with Pelléas et Mélisande for a multitude of reasons and I encourage anyone who’s even mildly curious to find their way to the Music Center for a very rich experience.
On Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Julliard 415, the school’s top-flight period-instrument ensemble, was joined by students from the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Juilliard Drama for a rare semi-staging of King Arthur.
A quick survey of the Met website shows wide swaths of available seats for the upcoming performances of La traviata and L’elisir d’amore. Only new works like The Hours and Fire Shut Up in My Bones have been achieving sold-out houses.
Perhaps the quirkiest of Mahler’s nine symphonies, the Fourth fits nicely with Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s somewhat idiosyncratic style.
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
Dramaturgically, The Hours is a mixed bag: I wouldn’t discard it, but I would want to fix it. But simply as an evening of gorgeous music and singing, it’s cordon bleu.
I hardly know where to heap my praise first.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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