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David M. Wagner Profile picture
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23 Dec, 5 tweets, 2 min read
1/ One of the pinnacles of Bel Canto comedy, and a contender for laurels across all comedy. And a great cast: pretty mezzo Isabel Leonard is just what Rossini wanted for Rosina, or if she’s not, shd be. Away (from the this role) with pipey coloratura sopranos, and likewise with
2/ mezzos whose chest voice comes up to their eyebrows (lookin’ at you, Jackie: sorry). I saw Lawrence Brownlee’s Rossini Almaviva @vaopera, and a year later he was singing it @MetOpera. Good: that’s what @vaopera is supposed to do. I thought Christopher Maltman was miscast as
3/ Mozart’s Don Alfonso, but he’ll be just right for Rossini’s Figaro.

Mind, I don’t know what this has to do with the season as I understand it; no doubt others understand it as as simply the “have fun” season. Well, if you’ve finished your last errand to the stores where they
4/ show no evidence of having learned from Dickens or Irving, much less Luke, then you can knock back w THE BARBER OF SEVILLE. #WhyShouldYouBeVexed #CantYouSeeYoureNext
5/ Extra treat: sonorous Georgian bass Paata Burchuladze, still getting his Don Basilio over the plate.

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More from @david_m_wagner

David M. Wagner Profile picture
27 Dec
1/ The updating - from time of Henry IV to early years of Elizabeth II - works surprisingly well. Setting the 2nd scene in a restaurant, with different conversations at different tables, is genius, and @Lisette_Oropesa's Nanetta (foot up for kissy-face w. Fenton!) is adorable.
@Lisette_Oropesa 2/ Big fans of Verdi's grand style - not only in AIDA and DON CARLO but also his other Shakespearean collaboration with Boito, OTELLO - find the "chamber" style of this, his last work, to take some getting used to. This can be done, and it's worthwhile. FALSTAFF ends with
3/ a fugue ("Tutto il mondo e burla). I saw it in the house with Dad - he knew it well already, of course - and at the end he was like: "The old man ended with a fugue! He closed it out with a fugue😃"
Read 5 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
26 Dec
1/ I’ve seen two Met prodns of MW during these webcasts. Unfortunately this is the later and current one. In previous, w Domingo & vonStade, this show’s charm stood out. In this one, the translation (Viennese operetta needs 2b done in language of audience) & the stage action
2/ take a tawdry turn. Yes there’s an undercurrent of raunch to Viennese operetta -

Baron Zeta: Did you find Count Danilo?
Njegus: No-
Zeta: Did you try all his mistresses?
Njegus: I didn’t have time to try them *all*! -

but it shd be an *under*-current.
3/ Nonetheless sons gems are still here: the Vilja song, obv; also:

Danilo: Baron, are you eavesdropping? That’s not done in the best diplomatic circles!
Zeta: Ours aren’t the best.
Read 4 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
25 Dec
1/ There’s a long tradition of considering this a Christmas opera - its world premiere was on Dec 23 1893 - but to overcome my mystification as to why, I have to reach back b4 40+ yrs of religious Christmases and recover a time when children + candy was enough to do the trick.
2/ It’s actually a rather good opera. If the 1st scene is a bit twee, the interlude b4 the 2nd scene is “The Witch’s Ride,” taking the piece along a darker route. .@MetOpera’s current production eschews twee-ness and emphasizes hunger: hence the cartoon-y chefs
3/ spreading a banquet in the children’s dream. The Witch’s house is an industrial kitchen. The contralto role of the Witch is taken by a tenor- here, the late great Philip Langridge - made up to look like Julia Child. In a way this practice dates back to the 1967-68 season, in a
Read 4 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
25 Dec
@walterolson Ah, the button said Don’t Get Me Started, but he pressed it!

If it had been Napoleon or the “spenta repubblica romana” and not the Queen of Naples signing the checks, there’d have been ppl like Scarpia willing to do the work, just as the Bolsheviks relied on tsarist bureaucrats
@walterolson (those they hadn’t killed), and the early Sandinistas depended on old Somocistas. The Cheka picks up where the Okhrana leaves off.

I’m sure Cavaradossi and Angelotti have good patter about how free ppl were under their “repubblica.” Ask Bernanos’s & Poulenc’s Carmelites
@walterolson how that works out.

But what if Scarpia, from a lad, worked for the Counter-Revolution bc he wanted to? He has a story arc, tho we don’t know what we’d like to know about it. Speculatively - when you get praised for defending the Church’s external interests, and there’s so much
Read 11 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
24 Dec
1/ “B” in “the ABC of opera,” LA BOHÈME fits into Christmas Eve only bc that’s when it’s 1st 2 acts take place. And frankly if our bohemians went out to Café Momus any other night, only diff wd be, there’d be fewer kids, *maybe* no military parade, and no toy-seller Parpignol
2/ to sing that one line made famous bc James McCracken used to sing it b4 he became a star. This is in no way a Christmas opera, but it’s immortal as a tale of youthful heartbreak, such that Julius Rudel, maestro/intendant/king of the NY City Opera in its heyday, cd credibly
3/ claim, “When I no longer cry at BOHÈME, I quit.”

Remember how when the same composer’s TURANDOT was on, I said that opera isn’t “Verismo” even tho Puccini was king of Verismo? Well, this is Verismo. And tho this performance is a bit old, reaching back to the beginnings of
Read 8 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
19 Dec
1/ They say NABUCCO was Verdi's breakout work. It was certainly the work with which he elevated the baritone from lyric to dramatic and from co-star to star. Only this time we have a late-career tenor in the part, returning to his long-ago baritone Fach. ("Fach" is German for
2/ "operatic vocal category," and all the jokes have been made so don't even try.) The title character is of course Nebuchadnezzar, so to those who've just been watching A Charlie Brown Christmas: "Sort of makes you want to treat me with more respect, doesn't it!" But this is an
3/ extra-Biblical tale of how Nebbie, having conquered Jerusalem, proclaimed himself God - and got a mentally disorienting zap for it. But gradually he recovers his wits and, against the odds, defeats the machinations of his power-hungry step-daughter Abigaille, saves the lives
Read 8 tweets

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