Tag Archives: review
La Cenerentola in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th May 2014Rossini 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…
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Così Fan Tutte in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th April 2014Mozart’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…
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La Boheme in HD 2014
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th April 2014La 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…
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La Sonnambula Returns to the Met
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th March 2014When 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…
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Werther in HD – Greatness and Catastrophe
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th March 2014Massenet’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…
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Tutto Verdi – Il Corsaro
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st October 2013Verdi’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…
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Tutto Verdi: I Due Foscari
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th May 2013Verdi’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…
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Giulio Cesare in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th April 2013David 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,…
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Tutto Verdi: Un Giorno Di Regno
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th April 2013Verdi’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…
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Francesca da Rimini in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th March 2013Riccardo 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…
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