The Spoleto USA Festival, is not only staging a great underrated Kurt Weill, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, but it's also staging one of our favorite operine, Gluck's delicious L'ile de Merlin, a total rarity for US audiences, it's actually the US premiere of the 1758 work (here in Milan it's been staged regularly for elementary school children, talk about a world upside-down).
Harry Bicket, who is conducting the show for Spoleto, calls mounting the opera “a voyage of discovery. We’re all in the same boat — I’m not joking,” Bicket said, falling unintentionally into puns. “I’d never heard of it.”
O.K. He didn't go to elentary school in Milan!
