Tag Archives: Met HD
La Rondine in HD – 2024
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th April 2024Today’s HD telecast of Puccini’s afternoon off – La Rondine – was a repeat of the production of 2009 but with a different cast. The composer’s attempt to write an Italian opera vaguely in the style of a Viennese operetta contains a lot of beautiful music in the service of a work that’s not close…
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La Forza Del Destino in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th March 2024Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino returned to the Met this season after an absence of 18 years. It was staged in a new production supervised by the Polish director Mariusz Trelinski. He moved both the time and places from the middle of the 18th century in Spain and Italy to sometime in the second half…
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Carmen in HD – 2024
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th January 2024Bizet’s Carmen is so great a masterpiece that it can withstand anything a deranged opera company can throw at it. Opera is a fragile art form, particularly in the 21st century. But with productions like Carrie Cracknell’s staging of today’s HD telecast combined with the recent new operas that started this season’s series the company…
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Nabucco in HD 2024
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th January 2024Today’s telecast of Verdi’s first masterpiece featured two of the singers who appeared the previous time Nabucco was broadcast in HD. Elijah Moshinsky’s 2001 production first appeared in the series seven years ago. Liudmyla Monastyrska was Abigaille then and now as was Dmitry Belosselskiy as Zaccaria. The title role today was performed by the Georgian…
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Florencia en el Amazonas in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th December 2023Mexican composer Daniel Catán’s opera was the Metropolitan Opera’s third HD telecast of this season. The work was first performed by the Houston Grand Opera in 1996. This run is Florencia’s first appearance at the Met. Much has been made over two features of the opera neither of which has any bearing on its artistic…
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Malcolm X in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th November 2023X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X was telecast today. As a piece of sophisticated parochialism it will grip the hearts of Upper West Side New Yorkers who regularly attend the Met. If you seek a work for the lyric theater that touches a spark common to all men you will not find it…
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Dead Man Walking in HD – Another Technical Screwup
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st October 2023The Met’s first HD telecast of this season ended with a whimper – a dead screen and no sound. The transmission stopped when the murderer De Rocher was strapped to a gurney and was being executed. After that nothing. No reprise of the hymn-like song sung by Sister Helen, no applause, no curtain calls, no…
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Don Giovanni in HD – 2023
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th May 2023Ivo van Hove’s Jack the Ripper with music by Mozart and sets by Jan Versweyveld masquerading as Le Corbusier was telecast this afternoon from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. The screen and the program said the opera was Don Giovanni, but Mozart’s dramma giocoso had all the giocoso removed by director Hove. The…
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Champion in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th April 2023Terence Blanchard’s second opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones which opened the Met’s previous season was such a hit (it will be back next season) that the company staged his first opera Champion this year. The opera tells the story of five time boxing champion Emile Griffith. Musically Blanchard’s first opera is not as…
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Der Rosenkavalier Not in HD – 2023
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th April 2023When I arrived at the theater where I have been watching the Met’s HD telecasts since they started about 17 years ago I was informed that the theater’s sound system had failed and accordingly the show would not go on – at least not where I was. I returned home in time to catch the…
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