Friday, May 20, 2016

The (off-topic) new

It was relatively unheralded when it premiered, but Ratmansky's Shostakovich Trilogy (playing tonight, tomorrow, and Monday in ABT's Met season) easily outshines anything else premiered at the Met this century. I suppose that's a fairly low bar, so let's leave comparisons aside and just call it significant. I'm still befuddled at how much better and more natural Ratmansky's story-telling is in non-story ballets like this set (or this week's premiere piece, the Serenade) than in his forthrightly narrative works. And as the moral degradation of the visible world continues, Shostakovich's attempts at order in his awful context seem ever more central.

More opera coverage soon and through next month.