(A smiling O.J. And yes I read the NY Post on occassion. What of it? omg free lunchz0rs. There best be some capri sun and those cheese n' crackers with that red stick...or someone's gonna get suckapunched.)
The first of the three, free bootyshakin' Metropolitan Opera Open House initiatives is about to launch in a few precious hours, and Opera Chic couldn't resist a sneak-a-peek before the Monday, September 24 la prima of Donizetti's Lucia (di Lammermoor) (not Saint Lucy of Syracuse). OC, of course, will be among the celebrity and opera die-hards on Monday, but a complimentary ticket to anything opera is as hard to pass-up as an invite to a sample sale at Costume National.
Today's day-long, final dress rehearsal of Lucia di Lammermoor is dedicated to the legacy of Beverly Sills, at the wish of Open House sponsors Dr. Agnes Varis (Managing Director on the Met Opera Board) and her husband, Karl Leichtman. The super-twin wonder-team of Agnes & Karl had not only sponsored the Open House of Madama Butterfly last year, but has also underwritten the Met Opera Rush Ticket program, which reserves 200 orchestra seats two hours before Monday-Thursday performances, offering sweet seats at 80% savings.
Since General Manager Peter Gelb had last year taken over Joseph Volpe's previous 16-year tenure, the Met Opera has been trailblazing accessibility of American opera with a ginormous outreach program and constant, complimentary perks offered to the public. Last year's Minghella-directed new production of Madama Butterfly was the first open house EV4R offered by MET opera, and proved to be a huge success...so we must give props to Met Opera for continuing to give the people what they want. Included in what the people want is a Q&A with performers Natalie Dessay (Lucia), Marcello Giordani (Edgardo), Mariusz Kwiecien (Enrico Suave), and John Relyea (Raimondo) after the performance, a complimentary bagged lunch, and a not-forbidden stroll across the stage. Mary Zimmerman’s new production of Lucia rehearsal begins at 11:00 a.m., but doors open at 10:00 a.m. for special exhibits and demonstrations throughout the lobby space.
Earlier this week, the rush for free tickets to the Lucia Open House began @ 10am this past Monday, September 17, via either box office phone line (that remained busy for at least the first hour) or the website (that simultaneously had some connectivity issues for the first hour), and boasted a maximum of two tickets per person, with customers having until 8pm the next day to show up for seating that was doled on a first-come/first-serve. btw, we laud the nerdy, lovable IT department behind the golden curtain at the MET for their tech-savvy prowess that incredibly stopped the servers from completely melting-down during the Monday morning rush.
The second Open House of the 2007-08 season is on Friday, December 21, for the final dress rehearsal for Director Richard Jones’s new staging of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel... with Vladimir Jurowski on the podium.
More exciting is the last Open House of the season on Friday, April 18...the final dress rehearsal of Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment under Laurent Pelly's direction. This one will surely be the most difficult ticket to secure, as it stars both Natalie Dessay and opera superstar Juan Diego Flórez.
Let's hope that the smattering of evil opportunists on craigslist get some karmic smack-down before then.