New Met seasons 2021-22 & 2022-23

[kernelbogey]

A new Met season begins Saturday 4 December [2021] with
Aucoin's Eurydice
Music by Matthew Aucoin, libretto by Sarah Ruhl, based on her play Eurydice.

Highlights of the 2021-22 season of broadcasts from the New York Metropolitan Opera include Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones - the first opera by an African American composer to be performed at the Met (8 January 2022), three Puccini favourites - Tosca (11 December 2021), La Boheme (29 January 2022) and Turandot (7 May 2022), Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (19 February 2022), the French-language version of Verdi’s Don Carlos (26 March 2022) and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (30 April 2022)

[Keraulophone]

https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/2021-22-season/ariadne-auf-naxos-live-in-hd/

Lise Davidsen on glorious form as Ariadne this evening at the cinema ‘Live from the Met’.

Also bought her new Grieg album today, so I’m happily maxed out on her myriad vocal charms.



New York Classical Review of the opera: https://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2...htful-ariadne/

[kernelbogey]

The five-act French Verdi Don Carlos tonight, 1800.

[kernelbogey]

The five-act French Verdi Don Carlos tonight, 1800.

Jamie Barton very impressive as Eboli!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Jamie Barton very impressive as Eboli!

Yes but it sounds so weird in French !

[kernelbogey]

Yes but it sounds so weird in French !

(Of course it helps if you remember that they're actually talking in Spanish!)

[french frank]

(Of course it helps if you remember that they're actually talking in Spanish!)

Based on Schiller's Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien so perhaps it should be in German?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Jamie Barton very impressive as Eboli!

As the long evening continues the singing is just getting better and better….

[kernelbogey]

Yes but it sounds so weird in French !

I dipped into Andrew Porter's notes in my DG Abbado set of this version. He did a lot of research into the two versions, and is very insistent that the Italian libretto is a translation from the original French, that Verdi wrote no new music for the Italian, and that its libretto often sits less well on the music than his original French version.

I agree about the excellent singing: so did the audience!

[Ein Heldenleben]

I dipped into Andrew Porter's notes in my DG Abbado set of this version. He did a lot of research into the two versions, and is very insistent that the Italian libretto is a translation from the original French, that Verdi wrote no new music for the Italian, and that its libretto often sits less well on the music than his original French version.

I agree about the excellent singing: so did the audience!

From the reviews I’ve read listening on radio was a better option than the live Cinema stream. The production was criticised for being very static and with the cliché Don Carlos drab , dark setting. Mind you I saw a production at Covent Garden once during a scene shifters strike that was done literally against “blacks”
It did have the bonus of Boris Christoff though..

[kernelbogey]

I heard just about the last Act of Lucia di Lammermoor from the Met last night. Nadine Sierra was excellent in the mad scene, for which the Met audience predictably gave a huge ovation. They also rated Javier Camarena as Edgardo. The mad scene featured a glass harmonica accompaniment - not sure if that is specified in the score...? (What I picked up about the production from the presenters did not sound, er, traditional.)

[Ein Heldenleben]

I heard just about the last Act of Lucia di Lammermoor from the Met last night. Nadine Sierra was excellent in the mad scene, for which the Met audience predictably gave a huge ovation. They also rated Javier Camarena as Edgardo. The mad scene featured a glass harmonica accompaniment - not sure if that is specified in the score...? (What I picked up about the production from the presenters did not sound, er, traditional.)

The glass harmonica was Donizetti’s original instrument. I guess it was replaced by the flute because they and the players and easier to find. It’s used more and more and is extraordinarily effective. It certainly encourages the soprano to tone down the vibrato in a sort of Irving Berlin “ I can hit any note purer than you “ competition

[kernelbogey]

The glass harmonica was Donizetti’s original instrument. I guess it was replaced by the flute because they and the players and easier to find. It’s used more and more and is extraordinarily effective. It certainly encourages the soprano to tone down the vibrato in a sort of Irving Berlin “ I can hit any note purer than you “ competition

Oh thanks. I thought it also conveyed 'madness' rather well - a wandering mind, as it were. It was well played.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Oh thanks. I thought it also conveyed 'madness' rather well - a wandering mind, as it were. It was well played.

Yes you’re right . I was joking. It creates an unworldly eerie atmosphere mirroring Lucia’s mental state. A bit of a compositional master stroke really. I think the Met video with Netrebko has the harmonica as well so they obviously make a feature of authenticity. Must catch up with this performance as last night I relistened to the ROH Grimes as it’s about to disappear from Sounds.

[bluestateprommer]

Spent last Friday night in NYC at the Metropolitan Opera, their perennial 40-yo Zeffirelli production of La Boheme, which was my very first time seeing it live (pdf program here if anyone wants to read it). I'd never seen it complete on TV or in HD at the cinema (and I'd missed the chance to see it from start to finish during pre-vaccine quarantine and the free video stream period from the Met). I actually now understand why it is an audience favorite and why it will probably never be retired from the Met's production repertoire. The extravagance of the Act II staging is the core reason for that, with the audience applauding in delight at said extravagance when the curtain goes up after the music of Act II starts. (And yes, a real-life donkey is present, and very well behaved, as is the subsequent horse.) The one debit is a generic one that somehow the Met has never figured out, namely not to start to lower the curtain before the music has stopped playing, so that we lose the quiet ends to Acts I & III, and the quiet just before the slam-bang end of Act III. OTOH, to mitigate a bit the hyper-literal realism of the Zeffirelli staging, the action in the rest of Act II freezes during a major aria (which I'd like to say is Musetta's waltz, but I'm not 100% sure, even though there aren't really other candidates). One other nice touch was in Act IV, when the staging has Colline and Schaunard doing their mock duel on the rooftop, outside the flat, as Musetta rushes in with the news about Mimi. So it takes a moment for Colline and Schaunard to come back "indoors" and register the news, after Rodolfo and Marcello have learned it first.

Musically, the star of the evening was the conductor, Eun Sun Kim, the new music director of the San Francisco Opera. I'd seen many of her reviews, which have tended to be strongly positive. From hearing her work here, the praise is very understandable. She guides and blends the colors and textures of the orchestra very well, with great clarity. If there is a debit, it is perhaps the over-symmetry of her left arm and right arm-baton gestures, which may be par for the course with conductors. But based on the results in the house, she worked out all the details in rehearsal well. ESK is also very sensitive to the voices with balancing the orchestra, although Stephen Costello as Rodolfo couldn't quite sail over the orchestra at times (even if his wife is 'with the band', in the 1st violins). In terms of audience favorites among the singers, Quinn Kelsey as Marcello takes the prize, judging by the applause. As Benoit and Alcindoro, Donald Maxwell does your side of the pond proud.

The house was not 100% full, but was very well sold. Masks and vaccination checks are still in place (a very good thing, IMHO). I got there quite early, by 7:15, to avoid late crowding just before the start. If nothing else, this production is now off the bucket list for seeing particular productions/operas live, as well as happily seeing what the fuss over Eun Sun Kim is about.