This week's main Met news was, of course, the announcement that Angela Gheorghiu's cancellation spree had extended to next season's new/imported Faust. On this and Peter Gelb's predictably unhappy response I'll have more here anon: closer changes first.
First is, again, the Met, for which Valery Gergiev never made it out of St. Petersburg to do his scheduled performances of Boris. Originally the cancellation was announced as Wednesday-only, but his backup Pavel Smelkov will conduct this afternoon's radio broadcast as well.
On the other side of the country, soprano Anja Harteros has canceled her San Diego run of Rosenkavalier (which was supposed to be her role debut as the Marschallin). I had actually planned on going for this -- she, with tenor Klaus Florian Vogt, is the least explicable ongoing star absence of the Gelb era. This cancellation on top of Furlanetto's -- he had been scheduled for Ochs -- has me thinking again about the pair of cross-country flights, but San Diego Opera did get a most interesting last-minute replacement: Twyla Robinson, whose naturally Strauss-flavored voice was one of the highlights of her 2002 Met Council Finals triumph.
Anja was great as Leonora/Trovatore by the way. It was a wonderful evening, special mention to Anthony Michaels-Moore as well, who had stepped in the day before and was super!
ReplyDeleteYes, it's occurred to me that I might as well just fly to Europe to catch her instead. It's not *that* much more trouble -- though I do like seeing American regional companies.
ReplyDeleteBut don't you like visiting good old Europe too? :).
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