Tag Archives: The Met in HD
The Magic Flute in HD – 2023
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd June 2023Mozart’s enduringly popular musical comedy was televised this afternoon in its latest Met incarnation directed by Simon McBurney. The bright comedy is swathed in darkness (lighting not tone) in his staging which employs more theatrical gimmicks than found in the trunks of 10 touring magicians. The orchestral pit is raised almost to stage level. A…
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Wozzeck in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th January 2020Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is opera’s great case of PTSD. Written during and immediately after The Great War it is an exemplar of the insanity that produced the war and that which followed it. The libretto, by the composer, is taken from Georg Büchner’s unfinished play Woyzeck. The author died in 1837 at age 23. Berg…
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Dialogues Des Carmélites in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th May 2019Francis Poulenc’s moving depiction of religious faith was telecast today throughout the world straight from the center of Sodom. Poulenc was a major composer who struggled with being thought superficial by deep thinkers like Pierre Boulez. He also was a deeply religious Catholic and a homosexual. He also found time to father a daughter. He…
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Die Walküre in HD 2019
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th March 2019Die Walküre is the best of Wagner’s four Ring operas. How do I know? Well, I can hear and the numbers also tell me so. Giuseppe Verdi was not only opera’s greatest composer, but also came up with the best system of evaluating the worth of an opera. “Look to the box office,” he said….
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Adriana Lecouvreur in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th January 2019OK, I’m guilty. I confess. I really like Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur provided it’s performed by great singers as it was today. No qualifiers like some critics who try to disguise their taste for Adriana as if it were a sugary drink. So what if Cilea repeats a lot of his tunes. They’re all very good….
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Luisa Miller in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 14th April 2018Verdi’s 14th opera was brought back to the Met after an absence of 12 years. Elijah Moshinsky’s production with sets and costumes by Santo Loquasto is set in 19th century England rather than 17th century Tyrol. This change made little difference to opera’s effect, though the time and place specified by Verdi makes a little…
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Così Fan Tutte in HD 2018
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st March 2018When I heard that the Met was going to do a new production of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte set in Coney Island during the 1950s I was relieved that they were not going to place the last of the Da Ponte operas in a Turkish brothel. Then I wondered why the Met needed a new production…
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Semiramide in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th March 2018Semiramide, Rossini’s last Italian opera before his move to Paris, was immensely popular in the 19th century; it all but vanished in the 20th. It’s the last classical Italian opera, a style that succumbed to French Grand Opera and to Italian romantic and more realistic opera. The opera has a plot that makes the Gordian…
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Tosca in HD 2018
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th January 2018Tosca has given the Met a lot of trouble recently, or perhaps it’s the other way around. First, this new staging replaced Luc Bondy’s 2009 production which lasted for only 59 performances. Everybody seemed to hate it. I thought, by the standards of today’s stagings of the standard repertory, that it was pretty tame. But…
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