Tag Archives: HD
Fire Shut Up In My Bones in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd October 2021I’ll get the bad news out of the way first. In a repeat of the 2014 telecast of Werther featuring Jonas Kaufmann, the signal from the Met’s broadcast of Fire Shut Up In My Bones was lost at the opera’s climax and did not return until the middle of the curtain calls. I was told…
› Read the full entry
Il Trovatore in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th April 2011Verdi’s Il Trovatore is the transcendental Italian opera of the first half of the 19th century. It is the culmination of that style of operatic writing introduced by Rossini and further advanced by Bellini and most importantly for Verdi’s development Donizetti. That Verdi was moving in a new direction was shown by Rigoletto (1851). That…
› Read the full entry
Tosca in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th October 2009The Met’s new production of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker” (the only utterance Joseph Kerman will be remembered for) Tosca was broadcast throughout the world today in HD. It was booed at its premiere on the Met’s opening night of this season. Let’s get this out of the way first. There’s nothing in this pedestrian mounting…
› Read the full entry
Met's La Rondine Marred by Technical Glitch
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th January 2009La Rondine (broadcast today in HD) has been absent from the Met for more than 70 years. The house brought it back solely as a vehicle for Angela Gheorghiu and her spouse Roberto Alagna. Why the Met let’s anything by Puccini languish while it finds the resources for Satyagraha or Dr Atomic can only be…
› Read the full entry
La Damnation de Faust: Berlioz and Video Projection
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd November 2008The Met’s new production of Berlioz’s I don’t know what to call it but it’s a masterpiece La Damnation de Faust was broadcast in HD on Saturday Nov 22, 2008. Robert Lepage directed the show making extensive use of computerized video images. Though Berlioz intended the piece to be a concert work, it has been…
› Read the full entry
Doctor Atomic in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th November 2008Doctor Atomic John Adams’ 2005 opera was broadcast today (Nov 8, 2008) in HD. The opera depicts the first atomic explosion in Los Alamos NM in 1945. The libretto by Peter Sellars is a pastiche (crazy quilt might be more accurate) of material written by the opera’s protagonists, Baudelaire, Muriel Rukeyser, John Donne, excerpts from…
› Read the full entry
La Boheme in HD – April 5, 2008
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th April 2008How many times can one watch La Boheme without being bored? Apparently it is impossible to be bored by any halfway competent performance of Puccini’s masterpiece. Saturday’s HD performance of Zeffirelli’s venerable staging from the Met was better than the minimum level necessary to ward off ennui. It’s been performed so many times at the…
› Read the full entry
The Met at the End of the Line
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th December 2007If you want to know just how great this country is, come to Lubbock. Lubbock is at the end of the line. It’s like lactate metabolism; the only way out is the way you got in (unless you’re flying Southwest Airlines). Yet look what’s here. A major university – one of the few in the…
› Read the full entry
