I haven't figured out the details, but see for yourself: Met Broadcasts at Rhapsody.
Note that it goes back to the infamous Ponselle Carmen.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Run, don't walk
If you're in the area and haven't already planned to see the latest Met Figaro, do so immediately. The best incarnation yet of Jonathan Miller's production, it is everything a Mozart opera should be: joyous, energizing, moving, and very much an event. The cast is simply terrific from top to bottom, and, unlike some other all-star ensembles, works together marvelously. Although Philippe Jordan's conducting has advanced from poor merely to decent (slow passages still sag and some of the fast are far too rushed), it hardly makes a difference. The musicality of the singers is all.
Most surprising, to me, were the ladies -- not least recent Lindemann graduate Kate Lindsey. She has a well-trained, pretty voice, but not necessarily an obvious star instrument. Yet in every other respect -- phrasing, sense, spirit, and bodily presence, which is to say in being Cherubino -- she may be the finest Cherubino I've seen or heard, outshining the likes of Graham, Mentzer, and DiDonato, in this production and even bigger names before. She has the physicality down without too much exaggeration (dear ladies: a little of the bowlegged thing goes a long way, particularly when it's amplified by the fact that you have hips), and adds a few amusing touches: failing to sing along with the girls in Act III and popping in with Don Giovanni's party music in Act IV.
But the evening's Countess, Anja Harteros, rightly got the biggest ovation. The German soprano made her debut here in the same part four years ago, and somehow I don't recall the ecstatic notices that should have followed a performance like this. With a spacious, full-colored instrument that may be (getting?) a bit large for the part, she sings her arias with amazing control and feeling. But "feeling", for her, is all over -- in the Countess' sorrow she radiates melancholy and hurt sensibility from every part of her body, while simultaneously appearing composed and regal. (She flirts and lets Cherubino get close, but actually rolling around with and making out with him, as Robin Guarino had Hong do in the early-fall revival? No chance.) An ideal Marschallin, perhaps, but also, I think -- if next season's rumor is true -- the one to dispel Maury's Traviata malaise.
I am, of course, kicking myself for missing the chance to see Harteros next to a similarly present, responsive, dark-voiced singing actress (Dorothea Röschmann, her Susanna in 2003) but perhaps that could have been too much of a good thing. Ekaterina Siurina is a bright contrast: shiny in voice, demeanor, and phrase, her efficient if temperamental Susanna (with perfect comic timing, she takes a swing at Marcellina when she thinks she's been had) is a perfect foil to the nuts around her.
Simon Keenlyside is another revelation. He's an entirely different Count from the usual successful sort: not oversexed and overhandsome but mannered, complex, slightly ridiculous, and emotionally volatile in body and phrase in a way that very few male performers are (or allow themselves to be) onstage. He and Harteros are the most high-strung of couples, and it's mesmerizing to watch.
It's almost unfair to have Bryn Terfel on top of all of this, so I won't say much. He's offhandedly casual and doesn't much aim for grace, yes, but these are both part of his amazing charisma and an excellent fit for Figaro, particularly a Figaro among the other characters here present.
Supporting parts were just as impressive, not least the Barbarina of ACB. Not just well-sung (under the lyric surface, she's got the core of steely sound to carry in the Met) but well-played.
* * *
The one change I didn't like was the elision of the Act I intermission. Act II of Figaro is one of the high points in all of Mozart and should be heard fresh, not as the back half of a Rheingold-scale marathon. Fortunately, the current cast makes it impossible to tune out or lose the thread.
I can't wait to go back.
UPDATE (4:45PM): I forgot to mention that yesterday was apparently a Gay&Lesbian Singles night. Now I'm neither gay nor a lesbian, but considering that the two events of this sort the Met's done so far have been at this and the best of Mattila's Jenufas, I'm starting to think I should be at that Peter Grimes...
Most surprising, to me, were the ladies -- not least recent Lindemann graduate Kate Lindsey. She has a well-trained, pretty voice, but not necessarily an obvious star instrument. Yet in every other respect -- phrasing, sense, spirit, and bodily presence, which is to say in being Cherubino -- she may be the finest Cherubino I've seen or heard, outshining the likes of Graham, Mentzer, and DiDonato, in this production and even bigger names before. She has the physicality down without too much exaggeration (dear ladies: a little of the bowlegged thing goes a long way, particularly when it's amplified by the fact that you have hips), and adds a few amusing touches: failing to sing along with the girls in Act III and popping in with Don Giovanni's party music in Act IV.
But the evening's Countess, Anja Harteros, rightly got the biggest ovation. The German soprano made her debut here in the same part four years ago, and somehow I don't recall the ecstatic notices that should have followed a performance like this. With a spacious, full-colored instrument that may be (getting?) a bit large for the part, she sings her arias with amazing control and feeling. But "feeling", for her, is all over -- in the Countess' sorrow she radiates melancholy and hurt sensibility from every part of her body, while simultaneously appearing composed and regal. (She flirts and lets Cherubino get close, but actually rolling around with and making out with him, as Robin Guarino had Hong do in the early-fall revival? No chance.) An ideal Marschallin, perhaps, but also, I think -- if next season's rumor is true -- the one to dispel Maury's Traviata malaise.
I am, of course, kicking myself for missing the chance to see Harteros next to a similarly present, responsive, dark-voiced singing actress (Dorothea Röschmann, her Susanna in 2003) but perhaps that could have been too much of a good thing. Ekaterina Siurina is a bright contrast: shiny in voice, demeanor, and phrase, her efficient if temperamental Susanna (with perfect comic timing, she takes a swing at Marcellina when she thinks she's been had) is a perfect foil to the nuts around her.
Simon Keenlyside is another revelation. He's an entirely different Count from the usual successful sort: not oversexed and overhandsome but mannered, complex, slightly ridiculous, and emotionally volatile in body and phrase in a way that very few male performers are (or allow themselves to be) onstage. He and Harteros are the most high-strung of couples, and it's mesmerizing to watch.
It's almost unfair to have Bryn Terfel on top of all of this, so I won't say much. He's offhandedly casual and doesn't much aim for grace, yes, but these are both part of his amazing charisma and an excellent fit for Figaro, particularly a Figaro among the other characters here present.
Supporting parts were just as impressive, not least the Barbarina of ACB. Not just well-sung (under the lyric surface, she's got the core of steely sound to carry in the Met) but well-played.
The one change I didn't like was the elision of the Act I intermission. Act II of Figaro is one of the high points in all of Mozart and should be heard fresh, not as the back half of a Rheingold-scale marathon. Fortunately, the current cast makes it impossible to tune out or lose the thread.
I can't wait to go back.
UPDATE (4:45PM): I forgot to mention that yesterday was apparently a Gay&Lesbian Singles night. Now I'm neither gay nor a lesbian, but considering that the two events of this sort the Met's done so far have been at this and the best of Mattila's Jenufas, I'm starting to think I should be at that Peter Grimes...
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Mattila in London
"In a one-shouldered black dress banded with crystals, frozen white bouffant and scarlet fingernails she towered majestically over Salonen, next to her a cowering shrimp in his habitual curry-house waiter uniform."
Words and picture above brazenly lifted from Intermezzo, a tireless and rarely-less-than-amusing London concert blog. (See also her coverage of ENO's "Aida and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"...)
This has, if you're wondering, very little to do with what's going on in New York, except -- in its appealing account of the Saariaho presentation -- as a reminder that one shouldn't always ignore the NY Philharmonic.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
The hothouse
There is little of the north in Samuel Barber's Vanessa: none, perhaps, but the arid heat of a stuffy over-fired winter drawing-room. The bracing northern chill is mentioned but never breaks into the characters' universal fever pitch of feeling, neither as contrasting mood nor clarifying space between. There is even less of Isak Dinesen therein: her unflappable God/storyteller's-eye objectivity -- in which all of her characters, however miserable, seem quite pleased to be caught -- whether born of Denmark or the clear Kenyan air, is nowhere to be found. (Despite the explicit credit, I think Barber and Menotti are, in spirit, even less true to her Gothic Tales than her ape Peter Høeg, who's been rewriting them as tales of political correctness. She left early from the only performance of Vanessa she attended.)
A better frame for the Americans' concoction may be the staging Menotti did at Spoleto, where the piece was sung in Italian and set in an upstate NY house not unlike their own. Emotionally, melodically forward and as a whole short on rhythmic contrast and impulse, Barber's opera sounds like a late transplant of verisimo despite its less naturalistic setting. The libretto's theme -- noncommunication -- is a near opposite thing, but the relentlessness of story advancement makes theme's felt effect substantially less. There is no room left, neither in surface nor sense, for the fruitful contrasts of, say, Pelleas. (From which we learn, to no surprise, that Menotti was no Maeterlinck...)
In other words, qualities that make the piece work so well in excerpt also make unrelieved hours of it rather hard to take -- at least for me. Your milage may vary.
* * *
The cast sang well enough Thursday, but it was no accident that the night's biggest hand went to baritone Richard Stilwell. Only he, in the supporting part of the Doctor, bestowed on his character the divine spark of spirit that Menotti could not.
A better frame for the Americans' concoction may be the staging Menotti did at Spoleto, where the piece was sung in Italian and set in an upstate NY house not unlike their own. Emotionally, melodically forward and as a whole short on rhythmic contrast and impulse, Barber's opera sounds like a late transplant of verisimo despite its less naturalistic setting. The libretto's theme -- noncommunication -- is a near opposite thing, but the relentlessness of story advancement makes theme's felt effect substantially less. There is no room left, neither in surface nor sense, for the fruitful contrasts of, say, Pelleas. (From which we learn, to no surprise, that Menotti was no Maeterlinck...)
In other words, qualities that make the piece work so well in excerpt also make unrelieved hours of it rather hard to take -- at least for me. Your milage may vary.
The cast sang well enough Thursday, but it was no accident that the night's biggest hand went to baritone Richard Stilwell. Only he, in the supporting part of the Doctor, bestowed on his character the divine spark of spirit that Menotti could not.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Violetta
Violetta is a star who discovers that she can no longer be a person. (She knew it all along, but who turns down an interlude of honest romantic happiness?) Renee Fleming is a star who insists on being a person: the single-mom, down-home image -- and self-image! -- etc. Never shall the twain really meet, but if you don't mind that, the current Traviata revival at the Met is about as good as you'd want, well sung all around (Polenzani is terrifically sincere as always, and Croft still has the resources to carry his wonderful phrases) with few hitches. Fleming does all of Addio del passato, which I appreciate.
It is tears that are somewhat lacking. But then, I (like my seat-neighbors, from what I've been able to tell) haven't been so moved by other big names in the part either, nor even up-and-comer Krassimira Stoyanova (who did, mind you, sing memorably last season). Perhaps they've learned our modern lesson too well: the star can have everything -- family, happiness, success. But that's a pop star's story, not a tragic heroine's. And who chooses the latter who doesn't have to?
(Fortunately and unfortunately, some still have to.)
It is tears that are somewhat lacking. But then, I (like my seat-neighbors, from what I've been able to tell) haven't been so moved by other big names in the part either, nor even up-and-comer Krassimira Stoyanova (who did, mind you, sing memorably last season). Perhaps they've learned our modern lesson too well: the star can have everything -- family, happiness, success. But that's a pop star's story, not a tragic heroine's. And who chooses the latter who doesn't have to?
(Fortunately and unfortunately, some still have to.)
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Two recent news stories
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
The curtain
Posting habits have been lax, I know, after opening-week excitement. Part of it has been circumstance, part inattention -- I read through schedules again Sunday to discover I'd not only missed the first performances of both Vanessa and Fleming's Traviata, both of which I meant to catch, but all performances of either Zajick or Borodina as Amneris. (Plus Alagna's walk-on night as Radames, which apparently turned out well.)
But looking back, I see that previous Octobers show similar lulls. I wonder how much of it has been the absence until now -- delayed, of course, another week this year -- of fall night's full dark curtain, enfolding us for hours daily until 8PM becomes time for stage-lit dreams.
More to come soon.
But looking back, I see that previous Octobers show similar lulls. I wonder how much of it has been the absence until now -- delayed, of course, another week this year -- of fall night's full dark curtain, enfolding us for hours daily until 8PM becomes time for stage-lit dreams.
More to come soon.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Is there a City Opera audience?
One learning about opera by reading reviews in the local press might find many aspects of opera blogging puzzling. One is this: why is New York blog coverage so relentlessly Met-centric? Almost every production, new and old, gets scrutinized, while even galas and premieres across the plaza pass with little notice. In print, meanwhile, both -- each in its little compass -- are dutifully covered with the same range of anodyne descriptions and mini-judgments.
Part of it's idiosyncratic, of course: blogs reflect individual tastes, which happen in this case to align a certain way. But such alignment reflects idiosyncratic responses to an unmistakable difference.
* * *
It was in sitting at a recent City Opera performance of Cav/Pag (one with this year's Tucker winner Brandon Jovanovich, who -- as far as one can tell in that juiced house -- sounded impressive despite a certain lack of Italianata) that I put my finger on it. There is certainly, for better or worse, a Met audience: an amalgamation, yes, but a coherent and meaningful one. And OONY, for example, has an audience some might find a bit too characteristic. But City Opera? True, at times it's a venue of Flanigan fans or the like, or the city's traveling pack of event-hounds encamps at some production. Yet the general impression is something else -- more living room than theater. They -- we -- watch, and applaud, and often seem pleased or moved afterwards, but there's an oddly detached undercurrent. It's an audience that's perhaps heard rumors about its own shape and existence and gives them some credit, but chooses mostly unconcern about such things. And so -- because every performance is also the story of an audience -- life-and-death urgency hardly ever makes it past the footlights here.
Sometimes I think it's the State Theater, a place seemingly designed to turn a public into a mass -- look at the undifferentiated sea of humanity in that huge rectilinear expanse of the only real intermission space... How different from the curves and niches of the Met. Or perhaps it's the inevitable outcome of running the country's biggest regional opera next door to the world's biggest international opera. Or...
Or maybe I'm wrong. But I think I'm onto something.
Is Gerard Mortier, then, the best person to get New York City Opera's audience to recognize themselves as such? I'd be surprised if he is -- assuming it's the current audience he at all wants. But we'll see.
Part of it's idiosyncratic, of course: blogs reflect individual tastes, which happen in this case to align a certain way. But such alignment reflects idiosyncratic responses to an unmistakable difference.
It was in sitting at a recent City Opera performance of Cav/Pag (one with this year's Tucker winner Brandon Jovanovich, who -- as far as one can tell in that juiced house -- sounded impressive despite a certain lack of Italianata) that I put my finger on it. There is certainly, for better or worse, a Met audience: an amalgamation, yes, but a coherent and meaningful one. And OONY, for example, has an audience some might find a bit too characteristic. But City Opera? True, at times it's a venue of Flanigan fans or the like, or the city's traveling pack of event-hounds encamps at some production. Yet the general impression is something else -- more living room than theater. They -- we -- watch, and applaud, and often seem pleased or moved afterwards, but there's an oddly detached undercurrent. It's an audience that's perhaps heard rumors about its own shape and existence and gives them some credit, but chooses mostly unconcern about such things. And so -- because every performance is also the story of an audience -- life-and-death urgency hardly ever makes it past the footlights here.
Sometimes I think it's the State Theater, a place seemingly designed to turn a public into a mass -- look at the undifferentiated sea of humanity in that huge rectilinear expanse of the only real intermission space... How different from the curves and niches of the Met. Or perhaps it's the inevitable outcome of running the country's biggest regional opera next door to the world's biggest international opera. Or...
Or maybe I'm wrong. But I think I'm onto something.
Is Gerard Mortier, then, the best person to get New York City Opera's audience to recognize themselves as such? I'd be surprised if he is -- assuming it's the current audience he at all wants. But we'll see.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Welcome New Yorker readers...
I'm under the weather and haven't been able to write of late, but it seems bad form to greet people with a two-week-old throwaway post.
At any rate, please see my two years' archived highlights to sample what has been posted here.
At any rate, please see my two years' archived highlights to sample what has been posted here.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Less Lucia
It seems the live Sirius-cast of tonight's Lucia that was scheduled to take place was yanked without comment and replaced with a rerun.
Anybody know what's going on? Could it have to do with Giordani's rumored illness?
UPDATE (10/8): The non-broadcast seems to have been part of some previously-arranged schedule shuffle. In fact, Giordani was apparently healthy enough to steal the show as Romeo the very next afternoon (after singing Friday's Edgardo), while it was Mariusz Kwiecien who was replaced just before Friday's Wolf's Crag scene by unexpected debutant Stephen Gaertner.
Anybody know what's going on? Could it have to do with Giordani's rumored illness?
UPDATE (10/8): The non-broadcast seems to have been part of some previously-arranged schedule shuffle. In fact, Giordani was apparently healthy enough to steal the show as Romeo the very next afternoon (after singing Friday's Edgardo), while it was Mariusz Kwiecien who was replaced just before Friday's Wolf's Crag scene by unexpected debutant Stephen Gaertner.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Mortier
As many of his remarks as I find silly or worse (including some in this very article), Gérard Mortier gets one big thing right:
Incidentally, the New York Sun carried a more City Opera-specific piece on their new general manager a few weeks ago.
Mortier told the audience of directors, theater administrators and dramaturges that encouraging audiences to see opera onscreen was giving up the crucial element of the art form, the live experience, according to a report from Deutsche Presse-Agentur.Gelb's idea, of course, is to do the latter via the former. Whether it works, or whether the tail wags the dog, we'll see in future.
"We shouldn't bring opera to the movies; we should bring people from the movies to the opera," he said.
Incidentally, the New York Sun carried a more City Opera-specific piece on their new general manager a few weeks ago.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Green eggs and ham
I found myself disappointed with the performance of almost every man in last night's Met revival of Figaro. Most of all in Philippe (son of Armin) Jordan, who had possibly the least impressive conducting outing this Jonathan Miller production has seen since its 1997 debut. (Best? Probably one of Edo de Waart's in 1999 or James Levine's in 2003 or 2005.) Still nevertheless professional, of course, for if he's worst it's among a remarkably well-turned-out group. But too often Jordan got in his own and the singers' way with inexplicable lurches and lags in tempo, vague pit-stage coordination, and an apparent preference for coaxing exquisite small phrases from the orchestra over maintaining the shape of a piece. He drew (from, incidentally, more or less the same players Levine used for Lucia) a forward but unrevealing sound, and while this Nozze showed more energy and forward momentum than his Don Giovanni two years back, they were more bluster than pep. Act 2's second half built to its climax fairly tightly and without too many hitches; the rest was more moments than the whole of Mozart's masterwork.
Also disappointing was Uruguayan bass Erwin Schrott in the title role. He doubly so, for his instrument and sound are undeniably impressive. But his overactive hamming, for a while refreshing (as a bit closer to the gesticulating quick-talking Latin factotum we might recognize as the Barber of Seville), soon tried my patience. Yes, he's Figaro -- but Mozart's is a Figaro who feels, whose fear of losing Susanna is and must be wholly real. In Schrott's case, this human element fails to appear from the caricature.
But in this he's definitely been more than encouraged by stage director Robin Guarino, who has fully farce-ified this revival. Figaro has the most business, but additions like the Countess rolling around on the floor with and actually kissing Cherubino in Act 2 (in this version, the Count's suspicion about her is pretty well-founded) abound. The amount of loose comedy makes it feel like week 5 of the revival (Met comedies' stage business tends to get looser and looser as a run goes along) and not the season opener. What will it actually look like by week 5? Who knows.
Michele Pertusi sang decently enough, but lacked the fire and dark sexual energy that predecessors -- most often Dwayne Croft or Peter Mattei -- have brought to the Count. Because of the other circumstances, that sort of driving force in the cast was much missed.
* * *
The women were much better, though having to battle conductor and stage directions kept any from shining at her best. Most impressive was probably Hei-Kyung Hong, whom I've heard both very good and very bad as the Countess. This was much to the good side, her arias as clear as ever (despite some weak spots, the tone is solid) and as honestly felt as anything this evening. Anke Vondung made a solid -- if somewhat straitlaced, though less so than Alice Coote last year -- Met debut as Cherubino, with a very American-mezzo-like sound. I liked debutant Kathleen Kim (Barbarina) a lot. Two other debuts: Robin Leggate (Basilio) and Ashley Emerson (a bridesmaid) -- both sounded fine but I couldn't tell at that length.
Finally, the Susanna -- Lisette Oropesa -- didn't get a program mention, just a printed slip. Her voice took about an act and a half to warm up (or relax), but she sounded good in the classic pingy soubrette-warbly way after that. As for character and feeling, she did about as well as anyone else on this night. Pretty good for a last-minute sub whose previous Met experience consisted of a Cretan bystander in Idomeneo and Trittico's nun #16, but not as much as one might hope for in future (perhaps when she's actually officially engaged ahead of time). But that goes for the entire evening -- I'm not sure even Röschmann's Countess could have made the whole more than it was: a night of easy laughs and few tears.
UPDATE (10/5): Edited to clarify whom the Countess was kissing.
Also disappointing was Uruguayan bass Erwin Schrott in the title role. He doubly so, for his instrument and sound are undeniably impressive. But his overactive hamming, for a while refreshing (as a bit closer to the gesticulating quick-talking Latin factotum we might recognize as the Barber of Seville), soon tried my patience. Yes, he's Figaro -- but Mozart's is a Figaro who feels, whose fear of losing Susanna is and must be wholly real. In Schrott's case, this human element fails to appear from the caricature.
But in this he's definitely been more than encouraged by stage director Robin Guarino, who has fully farce-ified this revival. Figaro has the most business, but additions like the Countess rolling around on the floor with and actually kissing Cherubino in Act 2 (in this version, the Count's suspicion about her is pretty well-founded) abound. The amount of loose comedy makes it feel like week 5 of the revival (Met comedies' stage business tends to get looser and looser as a run goes along) and not the season opener. What will it actually look like by week 5? Who knows.
Michele Pertusi sang decently enough, but lacked the fire and dark sexual energy that predecessors -- most often Dwayne Croft or Peter Mattei -- have brought to the Count. Because of the other circumstances, that sort of driving force in the cast was much missed.
The women were much better, though having to battle conductor and stage directions kept any from shining at her best. Most impressive was probably Hei-Kyung Hong, whom I've heard both very good and very bad as the Countess. This was much to the good side, her arias as clear as ever (despite some weak spots, the tone is solid) and as honestly felt as anything this evening. Anke Vondung made a solid -- if somewhat straitlaced, though less so than Alice Coote last year -- Met debut as Cherubino, with a very American-mezzo-like sound. I liked debutant Kathleen Kim (Barbarina) a lot. Two other debuts: Robin Leggate (Basilio) and Ashley Emerson (a bridesmaid) -- both sounded fine but I couldn't tell at that length.
Finally, the Susanna -- Lisette Oropesa -- didn't get a program mention, just a printed slip. Her voice took about an act and a half to warm up (or relax), but she sounded good in the classic pingy soubrette-warbly way after that. As for character and feeling, she did about as well as anyone else on this night. Pretty good for a last-minute sub whose previous Met experience consisted of a Cretan bystander in Idomeneo and Trittico's nun #16, but not as much as one might hope for in future (perhaps when she's actually officially engaged ahead of time). But that goes for the entire evening -- I'm not sure even Röschmann's Countess could have made the whole more than it was: a night of easy laughs and few tears.
UPDATE (10/5): Edited to clarify whom the Countess was kissing.
Season four
This post indexes commentary here on the 2007-08 Metropolitan Opera season. It will be updated as new reviews are posted.
Opening Night, the second performance of Lucia di Lammermoor, its spring return, and more
Marriage of Figaro, and its later cast
La Traviata, and its later cast
Iphigenie en Tauride
Roméo et Juliette
Die Walküre
Manon Lescaut: piece, performance, and last performance
Carmen
Otello
Peter Grimes -- and more
Ernani
Tristan und Isolde
La Boheme
Un Ballo in Maschera: Licitra; Vargas et al.
La Fille du Régiment
La Clemenza di Tito
Macbeth
The Abduction from the Seraglio
Opening Night, the second performance of Lucia di Lammermoor, its spring return, and more
Marriage of Figaro, and its later cast
La Traviata, and its later cast
Iphigenie en Tauride
Roméo et Juliette
Die Walküre
Manon Lescaut: piece, performance, and last performance
Carmen
Otello
Peter Grimes -- and more
Ernani
Tristan und Isolde
La Boheme
Un Ballo in Maschera: Licitra; Vargas et al.
La Fille du Régiment
La Clemenza di Tito
Macbeth
The Abduction from the Seraglio
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
The treacherous "and"
This is ungracious, I know -- and a bit late. Still, at the beginning of the season I've repeatedly heard this conjunction obscuring both truth and sentiment: "Sills and Pavarotti".
Sills was a great local figure, perhaps a national one too. She fully deserved the night of tribute she got at the Met. But one cannot seriously say "Sills and Pavarotti" unless in reference to one of the fantastic performances they did together of, for example, Lucia. ("Caruso and Pavarotti", "Björling and Pavarotti" -- yes. "Domingo and Pavarotti"? -- even Domingo fans, I'm sure, have their doubts.) Luciano Pavarotti, in some not-entirely-metaphorical sense, was opera, and his death was a world and opera-historical event. Even famously parochial New York cannot do without acknowledging his hors concours significance.
If Sills got a night, Pav should get -- what? I hope Gelb and company have something in mind, because it's disgraceful that his death, looming large in the hearts of so much of the audience and the opera world, has gotten no more recognition at the Met than opening night's moment of silence shared with the local favorite who nevertheless sang ~300 fewer performances there than he.
Sills was a great local figure, perhaps a national one too. She fully deserved the night of tribute she got at the Met. But one cannot seriously say "Sills and Pavarotti" unless in reference to one of the fantastic performances they did together of, for example, Lucia. ("Caruso and Pavarotti", "Björling and Pavarotti" -- yes. "Domingo and Pavarotti"? -- even Domingo fans, I'm sure, have their doubts.) Luciano Pavarotti, in some not-entirely-metaphorical sense, was opera, and his death was a world and opera-historical event. Even famously parochial New York cannot do without acknowledging his hors concours significance.
If Sills got a night, Pav should get -- what? I hope Gelb and company have something in mind, because it's disgraceful that his death, looming large in the hearts of so much of the audience and the opera world, has gotten no more recognition at the Met than opening night's moment of silence shared with the local favorite who nevertheless sang ~300 fewer performances there than he.
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