Monday, September 24, 2012

The week in NY opera (September 24-30)

With City Opera reduced to a sadly shrunken half-existence, this will mostly be the Met this season.

Metropolitan Opera
Elisir (M/Th), Turandot (T/SE), Carmen (F), Trovatore (SM)
A new, opening-night production plus some grand warhorses. Carmen is probably the most promising of the bunch, with two young fantastic lead voices: Anita Rachvelishvili, who already seems a veteran in this, and Yonghoon Lee, who's impressed me more than any other middleweight tenor since his debut as Don Carlo two years ago -- Jonas Kaufmann very much included; in fact Kaufmann appearances since then have had me wishing it were Lee instead.

Turandot does have a promising lineup of shouters (and actually Hibla Gerzmava is rather more), if you'd like that. The rest? We'll see.

3 comments:

  1. Just admit it, you are not a fan of Kaufmann!

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  2. I'm totally with you on Anita Rachvelishvili & Yonghoon Lee. True talents!

    If you get to attend a Liederabend with Kaufmann singing, you'll be far more impressed by him (or so I hope ;) ).

    Hibla Gerzmava is terrific. Her solid and beautiful voice is something that stays with you!

    If you get to listen to Krassimira Stoyanova singing ANYTHING [she'll be Desdemona in March 2013/The Met], it's hugely impressive: very classy, yet down to earth as a person, with a voice that leaves you in awe.

    It's shame that Heidi Melton won't be performing at The Met in 2012-2013, and yet she's arguably the best big voice from the US right now.

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  3. I like Kaufmann! It's not like Netrebko whom I actually find tiresome. I'm frustrated at times because he's not always as good as he could be, but he's always something.

    I just really like Lee, who's probably a few years away from being talked about enough generally.

    I've heard Stoyanova more than a few times here, most recently as Mimi. I like her and she always delivers, but I don't recall any real landmark nights... There's something about the conventionality of her physical presence/vocabulary that I think gets in the way of her excellent communicative singing. She's definitely going to be the one reliably strong link in that who-knows-what-will-happen spring Otello cast.

    Thanks for the comments!

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Absolutely no axe-grinding, please.