Tag

review

La Cenerentola in HD

May 10, 2014

Rossini is life. He reinvented Italian opera when he was 20. And every Italian composer who followed him is in his debt. Today’s HD telecast of Rossini’s version of Cinderella showed why. Cenerentola (Rossini calls her Angelina) has been done 38 times by the Met, all in Cesare Lievi’s 1997 production. His semi-surreal sets and Maurizio […]

Così Fan Tutte in HD

April 26, 2014

Mozart’s discourse on infidelity in the guise of an opera was presented as the penultimate broadcast of this season’s HD telecasts from the Met. Much was made by Renée Fleming in her introduction and interviews about how to regard this opera about the inconstancy of women in the 21st century. It seems to me that in today’s […]

La Boheme in HD 2014

April 5, 2014

La Boheme was performed at the Met and televised in high definition on April 5, 2014. This was the 1256th time Puccini’s masterpiece of the quotidian was staged by the company. Anita Hartig was scheduled to sing Mimi, but she was felled by the flu. Her replacement was Kristine Opolais who had sung the title role […]

La Sonnambula Returns to the Met

March 19, 2014

When I was studying music at Williams College my professor Robert Barrow, the chairman of the department and a figure of magisterial austerity, said that whenever he went to the Met to hear Wagner he always demanded a seat behind a post. I can’t remember if the old Met really had a seat behind a […]

Werther in HD – Greatness and Catastrophe

March 15, 2014

Massenet’s Werther was telecast today in theaters around the world. Let’s begin with the end. It was mute. Shortly after Charlotte entered Werther’s room in the final scene of Massenet’s opera the sound was lost. It wasn’t found until after the curtain fell. I’ve already heard from a viewer in San Francisco that the sound […]

Tutto Verdi – Il Corsaro

October 21, 2013

Verdi’s 12th opera (I’m not counting Jérusalem, his reworking of I Lombardi) was originally intended for London. After about three years of dithering Piave’s libretto was set to music and premiered at the Teatro Grande in Trieste on October 25, 1848. Verdi whose dramatic and lyric inspiration had failed almost entirely in his previous opera, I […]

Tutto Verdi: I Due Foscari

May 19, 2013

Verdi’s sixth opera was first performed in Rome in November 1844. Its libretto (by Francesco Piave) was based on Byron’s play The Two Foscari. Despite much beautiful music, the work has to be judged a failure. Three years after its premiere, Verdi himself summarized the reasons for the work’s failure. “In subjects which are naturally […]

Giulio Cesare in HD

April 28, 2013

David McVicar’s vaudeville, Giulio Cesare, was telecast in HD on April 27, 2013. The show featured goose-stepping Scottish troopers led by a man in a kilt, cardboard waves rollicking in the background, cutout ships of various periods, the Keystone Cops, Gay Pride, the Daughter of the Regiment, Texas Guinan, Yodel King, a king in a brassiere, the Charleston Q’Tease, Clara Bow, loose order marching drills, […]

Tutto Verdi: Un Giorno Di Regno

April 6, 2013

Verdi’s second opera was premiered, as was his first, at Milan’s La Scala. Unlike Oberto, Un Giorno Di Regno was a complete failure. Its first performance on September 5, 1840 was its last. Verdi was devastated to the point where he considered abandoning his career as an opera composer. In a later reminiscence he attributed […]

Francesca da Rimini in HD

March 16, 2013

Riccardo Zandonai (1883-1944) wrote 13 operas only one of which roams the outskirts of the standard operatic repertory – Francesca da Rimini. The Met telecast the opera today as its penultimate HD presentation of this season. The opera’s libretto is a shortened version (by the publisher Tito Riccordi) of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s tragedy of the same name. The […]

Rigoletto in HD

February 17, 2013

The Metropolitan Opera’s 847th performance of Verdi’s masterpiece was telecast in HD yesterday. It’s 6th on the company’s list of most frequently staged operas. Though Verdi was only 37 when he wrote Rigoletto it was his 17th opera. Over the remaining half century of his life he would write only 11 more. Rigoletto was based on Victor Hugo’s play […]

Un Ballo in Maschera in HD

December 9, 2012

Verdi’s great opera made its first appearance on the Met’s HD telecast series Saturday December 8, 2012. Un Ballo in Maschera has been in the standard operatic repertoire ever since it’s first performance in Rome in 1859. Ballo is clearly one of Verdi’s greatest achievements. Despite not having a tune that everyone recognizes, like Rigoletto’s La donna […]

Die Walküre in HD

May 15, 2011

Die Walküre is the most frequently performed of Wagner’s Ring tetralogy. Yesterday’s staging at the Met showed why. Under James Levine’s thrilling direction the company realized one of those rare occasions when everything comes together and sweeps the audience away. This was clearly the best show that the Met has delivered since the inception of […]

Il Trovatore in HD

April 30, 2011

Verdi’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 […]

Greenland to Toronto – The Clelia II

September 11, 2010

Below are a few additional thoughts about the Greenland to Toronto trip described in earlier posts. The Ship The 4000 ton Clelia II was built in 1990. It was one of Renaissance Cruises small ships. After the demise of that line it was a private yacht and was often chartered. It currently is one of […]