1/ Getting to like this opera more, partly bc of the @vaopera and @azopera perfs I’ve mentioned in previous ONEGIN posts, partly bc of this one, shown earlier as part of Hvorostovsky Week. “Hvor” - “Dima” - raised the artistic level of everything he was in; and, under Gergiev,
2/ with Fleming and Vargas, this lineup from 2007 was set up to show this opera at its best. Mixed reviews, gen’ly favorable, for Carsen’s production, which mixes abstract sets - or rather, no sets: the null set! - with highly traditional costumes and props (those autumn leaves
3/ in Act I). Quick, curtainless scene changes keep the story moving along, esp when a crew of Met dressers, themselves in costume, swarm Hvor at the end of the duel scene, take off a high percentage of his clothes, and suit him up in white tie for the scene at the Gremins’.
Btw I’m switching to Roman numerals for act numbers. I’ve been using Arabics to save “characters,” but I’ve seen recent stories about how ppl can’t read Roman numerals any more, and that just has to stop, so henceforth it’ll be Acts I & II, not Acts 1 & 2, etc.

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More from @david_m_wagner

22 Mar
1/ "Myths & Legends" is a fairly capacious theme: only genre it facially excludes is Verismo. This week we get two by Gluck. Now here's a thing. At the old Met, the one at 39th & B'way, the stage proscenium featured ornate rectangles w the name of a composer on each,
2/ names intended to celebrate the composers of most (obv not all) of the operas you might see within that proscenium. The first and earliest was not Mozart, but not Monteverdi either: it was someone in between them, namely, Gluck. (These plaques were in historical order, natch.)
3/ I don't remember whether there was anyone between Mozart and Verdi (Rossini, perhaps?). Verdi and Wagner of course; Puccini too IIRC, though he was "modern" for the old Met - two of works had their world premieres there (or four if you count IL TRITTICO as three). Gounod may
Read 14 tweets
22 Mar
1/ If any work bids fair to soften me on Handelian opera, this is it. McVicar directs this tale of Julio-Claudian politics as dark comedy. I think that’s how Handel intended it; McVicar modern-dresses it, so that e.g. a scene by a babbling brook is set walkin’ into a bar, with
2/ resulting sight gags. Putting the bar in Baroque, you know. Mezzo Joyce DiDonato is Agrippina. There are trouser roles (mezzo plays dude, e.g. Kate Lindsey as Nero) and countertenor roles (Iestyn Davies as Gen. Ottone). In Handel’s time certain roles were for “male soprano,”
3/ but these were, umm, not countertenors.

The program i.d.’s Poppea as “a Roman lady,” which is certainly an interpretation.

Next week we’re getting more Gluck per sq inch than ever b4 in these webcasts, and Gluck is said to led a revolution in opera, away from florid arias
Read 4 tweets
20 Mar
1/ In other opera activity this weekend - “The American RING” production of SIEGFRIED. Mime’s cave is a broken-down RV beneath high-voltage wires in the desert; Fafner is still a giant but encased (“dragon”) in a malevolent steam shovel; the Waldvigel is
2/ - sorry, the Waldvogel - is a “smashin’ bird” in a snazzy orange trench coat; Alberich the Nibelung Ring-forger, first seen in DAS RHEINGOLD as a confused miner, is a derelict pushing a shopping cart but still plenty proud.
3/ what I like about this production is not just that it’s cleverly untraditional but it carries a concept through and combines it w the traditional. Eg the Wanderer - Wotan in SIEGFRIED - enters as a desert roamer, but in addition to his ratty T-shirt he has the coat he wore in
Read 6 tweets
4 Mar
1/ For fans of my @MetOpera commentaries: I may take this Fri & Sat off, bc of something I haven't tweeted about but why not: ...
2/ My daughter is getting married this Saturday! And to the world's best boy!
3/ Now as to the operas: Fri night is PETER GRIMES, which I'd otherwise welcome another chance to see - I'm finally getting to know it a bit - tho not sure what the Womens History link is. I mean, Ellen Orford is a strong and benevolent character, but nothing can save Peter.
Read 7 tweets
4 Mar
1/ This time the Womens History link is clear: Julie Taymor was 1st woman to direct a prodn @MetOpera. She is famous for Titus (1979), an imaginative yet faithful film realization of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus - which I wd rather watch than any production of THE MAGIC FLUTE.
2/ No rly: the best tunes are great - the overture and the final chorus, "Heil sei euch geweihten" - but in betw are 2 hrs of dreary Masonic moralizing and frankly menacing Masonic integralism ("...verdienet nicht ein Mensch zu sein," rly?). QotN ftw!! What's more, tho Rene Pape
3/ is a great bass, maybe the all-around greatest today, he's not a Sarastro: for that, you want Kurt Moll or @MorrisDRobinson. With them, the quasi-oktavist depths of "Heiligen Hallen" are almost worthwhile. W/o them - pfft.
Read 4 tweets
3 Mar
1/ There’s no such thing as a bad reason to air this romantic-mythological masterpiece-monsterpiece, so it’s fine that the Met has done so repeatedly recently, sometimes (as here) in the glowing realistic Schenck prodn, sometimes in the high-tech crypto-trad Lepage prodn.
2/ I’m trying to figure out, tho, what makes it esp suitable for Women’s History Week. The Met’s promo copy suggests it has s’thing to do with Jessye Norman as Sieglinde. She was a woman all right, but so was Hildegard Behrens, who sings the primary heroine, Brünnhilde. And both
3/ roles have *always* been sung by women, bc DIE WALKÜRE’s world 1ère in 1870 was decades after the last barrier to women on the stage anywhere in Europe had fallen. Is it Mme. Norman’s *other* diversity card? But that was specifically celebrated, w this very performance among
Read 9 tweets

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