Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna; photograph by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
As the final notes of the Met’s new staging of Bizet’s Carmen rang out in the full swell of an orchestra that had run the musical equivalent of a marathon under the thrilling direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, director Richard Eyre pulled the focus from Don José cradling the lifeless body of his lover to a tableau of matador Escamillo defeating yet another bull. The metaphor was apt, though it fell somewhat short: If anyone is the bullfighter in the relationship between opera’s famous femme fatale and her obsessive brigadier, it’s Carmen herself.
That said, Eyre’s buildup to that moment is one of the most thrilling operatic deaths we’ve seen. Though Carmen is categorized as an opera comique, there is very little comedy in this version of Seville, where women are less sirens and more middle-management: seducing the townsmen, but at the mercy of the male bandits. In the latest new production of the Met’s current hit-and-miss season, this Carmen is a white-knuckled, edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting ride. And in the murder of the title character, there’s payoff in spades. Read more »
Not to be outdone by yesterday’s announcement of a free dress rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera, today the New York Philharmonic announced its own plans for a free open rehearsal on Wednesday, September 16, at 9:45am. That evening, Alan Gilbert officially takes up the reins as the Phil’s music director, with a program that includes the world premiere of EXPO by Magnus Lindberg, the orchestra’s newly appointed composer in residence. Also on the opening-night bill are Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi, featuring superstar soprano Renée Fleming, and Berlioz’s hair-raising Symphonie fantastique.
You’ll have to get up pretty early to take advantage of this offer, of course; general-admission tickets will be distributed on the Lincoln Center plaza starting at 8am (limited to two per person), and the last two times the Phil did this, thousands heeded the call. But the orchestra is making it worth your while to wait in line: You can sign up to receive program notes and submit questions for Gilbert via text message, and you’ll be eligible for prizes such as free concert tickets, autographed concert programs, discounts at the Phil’s Gift Kiosk and iPods pre-loaded with recordings by Gilbert and the orchestra.
Should you be unable to attend the morning rehearsal but still want to catch the concert without paying, you’ve got two options: Turn up in the evening to watch the program broadcast live on screens above the Lincoln Center plaza, or stay home and watch the tape-delayed PBS broadcast. And if for some reason you still need further motivation to turn up for catch Gilbert’s opening bow in person, check out his blazing performance of Bohuslav Martinu’s Symphony No. 4 with the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded in April.
Anticipation is running high for the start of the Metropolitan Opera’s new season, which opens with a fresh production of Tosca, Puccini’s bloody tale of lust, revolution and revenge. Director Luc Bondy is in charge of restaging the repertoire staple that George Bernard Shaw musicologist Joseph Kerman once deemed a “shabby little shocker” (in a memorable but apparently much-misattributed quote), with fiery Finnish soprano Karita Mattila singing the title role and music director James Levine conducting.
But if you just can’t wait for opening night on September 21, you’re in luck: The Met is opening the final dress rehearsal—Thursday, September 17—to the public, free of charge. Doors will open at 10:30am for the 11am rehearsal, and you can stick around for a Q&A with the artists afterward. Free tickets, limited to two per person, will be available at the Met box office on Sunday, September 13, at noon—and they’re going to be snapped up fast, so don’t sleep in.
You’ll have two more chances to see the Met’s biggest stars for free in final dress rehearsals this season. You can catch Bartlett Sher’s new production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, with Anna Netrebko and Joseph Calleja, on November 30, and Mary Zimmerman’s staging of Rossini’s Armida, starring Renée Fleming, on April 9. We’ll have the details for those open rehearsals as the dates draw near.
Consider it a recession one-two punch: Famous for touring the five boroughs each summer, the Metropolitan Opera announced in April that it would be offering a series of recital concerts in lieu of their traditional—and highly anticipated—complete opera performances. And at last night’s opening concert, we were told that the Central Park SummerStage sound system is in need of a $250,000 upgrade. While the latter made for some cringeworthy moments in the first act (not to mention an amplification of every breath and cough from the headset mikes), it didn’t detract from the fact that this recital by Alek Shrader, Paulo Szot and Lisette Oropesa, pictured left to right above, may have been one of the Met’s best summer performances, period.
The program was surprisingly well planned with arias and duets either mentioning or revolving around innocent love. While many (this reviewer included) could have done without the American musical-theater numbers at the end, they were certainly crowd-pleasers—and allowed headliner Szot to sing what he is currently best known for: “Some Enchanted Evening.”
With the economy in the state it’s in, it comes as no surprise that the Metropolitan Opera will not be returning to its former practice of touring complete opera performances out to the five boroughs and New Jersey this summer. But the good news is that the company is offering considerably more than last summer’s one-off schmoozefest with the “love couple” of Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu.
Moments ago, the Met announced its Summer Recital Series, a run of six concerts in five boroughs, presented in collaboration with the City Parks Foundation, as well as a Summer HD Festival of opera video screenings on the Lincoln Center Plaza, starting with Il Barbiere di Siviglia (with Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez) on August 29.
The first recital, scheduled for July 13 at Central Park SummerStage, features très hot baritone Paolo Szot (pictured) with two of the company’s best young prospects, soprano Lisette Oropesa and tenor Alek Shrader, all accompanied by pianist Vlad Iftinca. Szot, as many of you already know, will be starring in the Met’s fantastical new production of Shostakovich’s The Nose next season. All six recitals will be presented free of charge, but you’ll need tickets for the SummerStage event; they’ll be available via the Met website starting June 1.
After the break, the complete schedule of recitals and screenings.
It would be foolish to imagine that any production of Il Trovatore could meet the insane demands Verdi wrote into it: The opera requires four of the world’s greatest singers, a superlative chorus, an imaginative staging that allows for improbably fast changes of scene and—last but not least—a willful suspension of disbelief in its ridiculous plot contrivances. Hold your breath for all of those stars to line up, however, and you’re in for a long, dark night with your record collection. For the rest of us, the new David McVicar production of Il Trovatore is not only better than anyone had reason to suspect, it could easily turn out to be a highlight of the spring.
First, and most importantly, this new staging finally breaks the curse of the Met’s last two Trovatore productions: one dismal, the next roundly reviled. McVicar’s solution involved a huge, gray vertical slab on a turntable, allowing for quick and easy changes between indoor and outdoor scenes, while also providing—at last!—a reasonably credible scenario to account for an otherwise inexplicable instance of mistaken identity during the first act. McVicar’s blatantly Goya-esque vision was atmospheric and effective, though the turntable could definitely use a greasing before its next go-round. Read more »
An opening night at the Metropolitan Opera is always buzzworthy, but there’s a special anticipation in the air for tonight’s maiden voyage of Verdi’s rousing warhorse Il Trovatore (”the troubadour”). This is one of Verdi’s most popular and tuneful operas—you definitely know the “Anvil Chorus,” and you’ve probably heard the high-flying tenor aria “Di Quella Pira.” But what makes tonight special in an edgy way is the memory of the Met’s last two Trovatore productions, both notorious flops. Factor in a plot so ludicrous that parody seems superfluous—which didn’t prevent the Marx Brothers and countless others from goring it—and you can see why folks at the Met might avoid mentioning the opera’s name, like theater companies insist on referring to a certain Shakespeare drama as “the Scottish play.”
Still, there’s ample cause to suspect that the old curse might be broken tonight. Read more »
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With the economy in the state it’s in, it comes as no surprise that the Metropolitan Opera will not be returning to its former practice of touring complete opera performances out to the five boroughs and New Jersey this summer. But the good news is that the company is offering considerably more than last summer’s one-off schmoozefest with the “love couple” of Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu.
It would be foolish to imagine that any production of Il Trovatore could meet the insane demands Verdi wrote into it: The opera requires four of the world’s greatest singers, a superlative chorus, an imaginative staging that allows for improbably fast changes of scene and—last but not least—a willful suspension of disbelief in its ridiculous plot contrivances. Hold your breath for all of those stars to line up, however, and you’re in for a long, dark night with your record collection. For the rest of us, the new David McVicar production of Il Trovatore is not only better than anyone had reason to suspect, it could easily turn out to be a highlight of the spring.
An opening night at the Metropolitan Opera is always buzzworthy, but there’s a special anticipation in the air for tonight’s maiden voyage of Verdi’s rousing warhorse Il Trovatore (”the troubadour”). This is one of Verdi’s most popular and tuneful operas—you definitely know the “