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Tomorrow night's Carnegie Hall Opening Night Gala with the Boston Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by that Milanese powerhouse Daniele Gatti.
Gatti replaces James Levine, who yesterday announced his absence from all Fall performances to recover from looming back surgery on a herniated disc.
Berlioz's Roman Carnival overture will be replaced by Beethoven's Coriolan overture.
OC will be there tomorrow night in an Inter jersey, which she'll wear over her Miu Miu dress.
Opera Chic was given the royal treatment by those music-loving Brits at London-based Classical Music Magazine, Rhinegold Publishing, gleefully participating in Barlines Q&A session while wearing Louboutins and a smile. We chatted about Muti's Rome adventures, Krystian Zimerman's selective memory, Englishmen in Milan, and opera's brightest new stars.
Now be nice, support OC and go buy the darn magazine already.
Norman Lebrecht reports that the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra has elected British-born Karel Mark Chichon as their new Chief Conductor & Artistic Director. Latvian mezzo, Elīna Garanča, is no doubt proud that her husband is nestling into her birth city, Riga. KMC was the orchestra's Honorary Guest Conductor since 2007.
Joshua Bell welcomes you into his sprawling Manhattan townhouse, but only if you promise not to sit on the Eames lounge chairs (they've just been re-upholstered by Poltrona Frau) or touch the leather walls (they've just been upholstered by Bill Amberg).
Everyone's officially invited to vicariously hang out in Bell's house and eavesdrop on one of his infamous musical parties, where luminaries of the art, music, and literary world gather to jam. The new CD dropped yesterday -- Bell's "At Home with Friends" -- which was inspired by these parties and is full of vocal/instrumental duets that the American violinist recorded with friends in an informal, intimate setting, blurring the lines between classical lite, bluegrass, and broadway.
Tracks include duets with Nathan Gunn, Josh Groban, Sting, Regina Spektor, Marvin Hamlish and Kristin Chenoweth (and Rachmaninoff raised from the dead to duet Grieg's Sonata #3), Impressive, 'tho we'll defer to our Kathleen Ferrier and Friends with the coolness of Bruno Walter & John Barbirolli.
Go here for a video tour of Joshua's lavish NYC townhouse (and Josh Groban in another one of my grampy's comfy cardigans).
Complete track listing below the cut...
Continue reading "Went to Bell's Place, Be Home Later, Start Dinner Without Me." »
Just one more reason we love Roberto Bolle (aside from his humanitarian work for UNICEF and his scalding photoshoots with Bruce Weber): his laudable collaboration with amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. Last night he was at Milan's Museo Della Permanente for an amfAR gala, which he chaired along with Janet Jackson, Linda Evangelista, the DSquared twins, and Lapo Elkann. The night included cocktails, an auction, and one of Dita Von Teese's ~special~ performances. Also in attendance was Donatella Versace, Kanye West, and Riccardo Muti's daughter, Chiara. The prive' event wasn't open to the average Giovanni: the cheapest ticket could be bought for $2,100 USD.
Click on the link below for more Bolle, random celebrities, and Chiara Muti!
After taking in Jonathan Miller's fleshy, nostalgic, utopian Le Nozze di Figaro, to which the audience heaped-on endless praise during Saturday night's Metropolitan Opera performance, Opera Chic understands (even more) why Luc Bondy's vision for a lean, merciless, unapologetic Tosca was so despised by the same crowds. It's okay. We don't hate the player or the game.
In Wolford matte black tights, Givenchy towering black heels & white ribbed tank, Azzedine Alaia black knit wool miniskirt, vintage Cartier, and a Diane Von Furstenberg trench (and Paul Smith umbrella), OC (elegantly) stomped her way into the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night for the second replication of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (la prima was on Tuesday night) presented in Jonathan Miller's classic version of an idealized, 18th century generic Italy, palazzos with miles of moldy, paneled windows (lovely and spacious sets as visualized by Peter J. Davison).
Dr. Miller's stalwart vision premiered in 1998 with Bryn Terfel's Figaro, Cecilia Bartoli's Susanna, Renée Fleming's Countess, Dwayne Croft's Count, Susanne Mentzer's Cherubino (and yeah, Danielle de Niese's Barbarina) and has been through many revisions in its 20 11 years on the Met stage. Gregory Keller now responsible for direction, he's moved the production further away from Miller's essential vision to one of unsubtle and ungraceful comic relief, frankly at times, painfully unessential.
Israeli Maestro Dan Ettinger, already two shows under his belt for his Fall 2009 Metropolitan Opera debut, understands the deep humanity of Mozart's score with an inspired, musical interpretation. The former baritone, now Kapellmeister at the Berlin State Opera and MD of the Israel Symphony Orchestra, takes his Mozart with a light, delicate touch -- stirred, not shaken -- although O.C. prefers the snappier, crisper, more upbeat, ruthless tempi of Riccardo Muti, the exciting and excited Salzburg 1937 Bruno Walter, or say, the glistening grace of Ferenc Fricsay's and Guido Cantelli's Mozart, but Ettinger gave us a nice compromise with his light-on-legato servings and a mastery of dynamics, easily shifting between whispering pianissimo and rich forte with a subtle hand.
And we're eager to hear how Maestro Fabio Luisi fares in his Metropolitan Opera Nozze debut, as he relieves Ettinger for six Nozze performances starting November 23.
O.C.'s beef with Jonathan Miller's production is the clumsy comedic tinkering that Gregory Keller has foisted on Mozart & Da Ponte's elegant, graceful opera, turning it from the inspired work to witless opera buffa. Mozart's Nozze features stirring moments of complete transcendence, and Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto encapsulates profound themes: forgiveness, repentance, and humility. Here, Mozart's sublime composition is milked for comic relief, cheap laughs, and affected pantomime. Textual nuances within the libretto are manipulated, stretching the Italian words for comedic effect, which alters the musical grace and strips the narrative of subtlety. Turning the characters into one-dimensional caricatures depletes them of sympathy, and even the final, earthshatteringly contrite "Contessa, perdono" fails to provoke.
Jonathan Miller's Nozze -- somewhat of a streamlined, British version of Zeffirelli if Frengo had a smaller budget and locked-out of the props department -- is predictable; a sterilized, non-threatening, antiseptic version. Not a centimeter of bewbs showing. Seriously, would a little cleavage kill anyone? Even prudish Frengo shows more cleavage than Miller's James Acheson does with his conservative costumes...although we're not dissing Acheson's pretty wardrobe with gorgeous splashes of color, like Susanna's adorable red shoes and Figaro's robin egg blue knickers.
The highest-billed singer of the evening was American soprano Danielle de Niese as Susanna. Miller's Nozze became essentially the tale of Susanna and Figaro, everyone else a runner-up. De Niese has come full circle, her MET company debut as Barbarina in the 1998 premiere, and now eleven years later comes her Susanna premiere. Her voice is uncharacteristic of Susanna's sweet, clear, musical fach and instead is a harsher, crustier lower/middle register with a nice top. The one thing that de Niese excels at is in her acting. In this production, she makes her priorities apparent: actor first, singer second -- so much so that she swallowed her lines while suffusing dramatic emotion into her role. During Act II, Scene seven's duettino with Cherubino "Aprite, preso, aprite" she is so focused on being breathless and panicky that there's no music left to her voice. Act I, Scene 7's trio with Susanna's "Che ruina, me meschina!" becomes all about the fainting pantomime, nothing else existing -- not the music, nor the libretto. De Niese should be praised for staying one step ahead of even her most practiced contemporaries, consistently "on" with an enchanting magnetism. She forges a lasting connection with the entire audience and treats them as close allies, which can only work to her advantage.
Canadian bass-baritone John Relyea sang Figaro with a mellifluous, deep, secure baritone, reprising the role that he premiered at the Met in 2006. His cavatina "Se voul ballare, Signor Contino" was, trills and all, gorgeous. Three hours later at the challenging, emotive Act III, Scene 8 "Aprite un po'quegli occhi", Relyea turned it out well for such a demanding aria.
New Yorker mezzo Isabel Leonard slammed her Cherubino MET debut with a ringing, clear, clean, healthy tone and acting with gusto to accompany her delightful pants charade. While her "Non so piu' cosa son, cosa faccio" started off just a little bit on the shaky side, she recovered fully with "Voi che sapete", performing seamlessly with Ettinger, who whispered the orchestration in a show of unselfish musicianship.
Danish baritone Bo Skovhus was Count Almaviva, which he last sang at the MET in the same production a decade ago. His voice was in full command and Act III's "Vedro' mentr'io sospiro" was a standout.
Emma Bell also had her MET debut singing the Countess. Her "Porgi, Amor" showed off nothing but vibrato, a deep(ening) voice hidden under layers of costume and Ettinger slowed down the aria to an unsavory tempo. "E Susanna non vien... Dove sono" fared better.
Bit characters were all well cast: Maurizio Muraro's Don Bartolo had nice color for a dry voice while Marcellina's Wendy White kept high spirits and clear notes. Philip Langridge's Don Basilio blended well into the cast of misfits. Ashley Emerson's Barbarina was too adorable, like a pocket-sized version and her "L'ho perduta... me meschina..." and she won us over.
So what did you come to the Metropolitan Opera for? Mozart's lofty, heaven-bound score? Da Ponte's dignified libretto? Better if you came just for the laughs and you weren't disappointed. Miller's production is a risk-free crowd pleaser for sure. So New Yorkers, here are your candlesticks, your knife, your stabbing, your heroic desperate leap to suicide, while the piety and non-threatening, safe posturing should make up for Tosca's three whores.
Cecilia Bartoli, whose voice fits Opera Chic's ears as snugly and coolly as a pair of her favorite The Proportion of Blu skinny jeans -- waxed not raw, thank you very much -- and whose Sacrificium CD of castrato arias is about to finally manifest itself, has spoken to august Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview duly mentioned by the Associated Press.
Among the most interesting point la Ceci made?
She mentions how people still go to extreme lengths for a shot at fame -- the way poor Italian families in the 17th, 18th and even in part of the 19th Century would allow one of their sons to be castrated hoping that he'd become rich and famous as a castrato singer:
"I think of plastic surgery: especially women, but also men, mutilate themselves and sometimes are left disfigured like Michael Jackson. Botox. Liposuction. These are also a 'sacrificium'. Not for art, but for beauty. An empty ideal of beauty".
Bartoli, who explained that a deal for her to appear at la Scala in a recital is very likely, also added a little arsenic, explaininghow Paul Potts and Katherine Jenkins are marketed as opera singers,
"but they are a pop music phenomenon, the British are confused about that. Between pop songs they sing an aria, with amplification. They never appeared in an opera house, unamplified, they never sang a whole opera. They're called opera singers only for marketing reasons. Some people can do pop and opera, Bocelli for example: he is unjustly attacked, but he also has the ability to sing opera. Potts and Jenkins? Opera means constant study, discipline, hard work. Again: sacrifice".
The interviewer then lighten things up by asking, jokingly, if this means there's no chance of ever seeing Jenkins sing Carmen at la Scala -- and la Ceci gleefully hits it out of the park:
Therefore, one would feel like asking as a joke, we'll never see Jenkins at Scala, as Carmen, maybe -- doesn't she already sings the Habanera in her concerts, after all?
"Well, Carmen opens on December 7, right? Let me see... September... October... November... It's hard to train and take voice lessons and learn the whole part before December 7! No, we'll never hear Jenkins or other pop singers at la Scala".
In November, Italian pOpera star Andrea Bocelli will release his first Xmas recording, My Christmas, a compilation of seasonal favorites and duets with ~luminaries~ such as Natalie Cole, Mary J. Blige, Reba McEntire, and Katherine Jenkins -- who will all be shadowed by possibly (maybe, probably) the greatest guest(s) in the history of mankind -- Jim Henson's Muppets. In a duet of "Jingle Bells", Bocelli will sing with Kermit, Miss Piggy and an assortment of stuffed foam rubber puppets. The CD will be hyped by an accompanying PBS Great Performances extravaganza featuring the same line-up. O Tannenbaum!
OC must have been sleeping hardcore in .it'ville when this cultural ad campaign was launched by Americans for the Arts, where kids are literally fed art & music via novelty foods like "Raisin Brahms" and "VanGoghurt". What -- no Faure Flakes? No Cimarosa Toast Crunch? No Honey Bunches of Paisiello (ok, that one's a stretch)...Enjoy the Brahms shenanigans.
Via Tom Sutpen's always amazing blog "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats": George Balanchine and Murka
After a 25-year shut-out, Teatro dell'Opera di Roma is preparing for their opening night (October 2) of Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Gianluigi Gelmetti is saddled with the baton and will lead the Teatro dell'Opera's orchestra, who hasn't wrapped their bows or lips around the five-act score since the 1983/84 season. The new production, by Pierre Audi, is in co-production with the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, which they premiered in Brussels last year looking like a post-apocalyptic Dan Flavin retrospective.
Monica Bacelli will make mincemeat of the role, singing Mélisande (rotating with Nathalie Manfrino), Canadian baritone Jean-François Lapointe sings Pelléas, French bass-baritone Laurent Naouri sings Arkël, and French baritone Jean-Philippe Lafont splits Golaud with Kurt Rydl, the Austrian singer with the self-appointed sobriquet "Der MEGA BASS". Listen, he can call himself the ~The Viennese Juggernaut~ for all we care...the man has sung with with Sinopoli & Sawallisch in Rome, Giulini in Siena, Muti at Scala, and Celibidache in Munich -- and if that's not full of enough win, the Bass rents out his Vienna residences and leaves half-eaten Tafelspitz sandwiches in the fridge for you.
Wednesday night's coolest classical happening was at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, which opened its 2009/10 season with "The Blue Rider In Performance" in celebration of their 21st season. From the Metropolitan Opera opening just 48 hours prior, where the the glamour and decorum of New York's oldest, endowed legacies competed with the musty, family jewels bestowed on younger second wives (already on their second facelifts) and over to the modest Miller Theatre where the coolest classical nerds, Xenakis-worshiping art students in Nike Dunks and AA flocked to hear a modern, rawkingly avant-garde program -- hell, we even had cultural arts mainstay ambassador Austin Scarlett front and center (okay, to be fair, he was also at the Metropolitan Opera Opening Night Gala, except the paparazzi no longer want his photograph despite the fact that his hair looks *almost* as good as Martha Stewart's).
It's no coincidence that Miller Theatre's opening night alluded to the iconic hipster of modern abstraction (and we'll give him expressionism FTW), Vasily Kandinsky, who's also the headliner at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum this month. The Miller Theatre's show -- a curious melange of music, dance, and visual arts -- was tied in directly with the current (self-titled) Vasily Kandinsky retrospective that opened a few days ago (September 18) and was co-produced with the august museum for their Works & Process performing arts series.
The Guggenheim, in curating the artworks of the Russian painter from the years 1909-1914, highlights Kandinsky's The Blue Rider group, a collection of visual artist and composers in and around Munich's 1910s cultural scene. The motley crew of Blue Riders boasted many of the original founders of 20th century modernism who explored new paths of creativity. It was here that Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg and Kandinsky associated closely with each other -- so much that Kandinsky's painting, Impression III (concert) was inspired directly from a Schoenberg concert in Munich attended by the painter (of which the Miller Theater pulled their set-list for the opening night concert) . Kandinsky (and friend Franz Marc) apotheosis of their crew was The Blue Rider Almanac, a published synthesis of modern painting, art and music compositions, published in 1912. The modern, avant-garde zeitgeist spanned from Russia to Germany, and captured the incipient movement, only to be squashed by the outbreak of World War I.
The Miller Theatre set out to create an event tied in with a quote of Arnold Schoenberg which expounds on how a musician is challenged to most effectively express himself in the theatrical medium, "making music with the media of the stage," -- and this they did.
Click the link below to read the full review...
Alan Gilbert gives a tour of his Lincoln Center suite clubhouse:
What?! No wii? No vintage Galaga arcade machine? No mini-fridge full of Olde English 800s? Not even Willem Mengelberg's bronzed baby shoes? Gilbert, hock that ~royal blue, velvet-covered couch~ for an xbox or we're never coming over.
After Dudamel's September Vogue feature, who wouldn't be clamoring for some Conde exposure? Anna Netrebko looking like she never has (literally) in front of Annie Lebovitz's lens for Vogue, plugging her (and Rolando's) la Boheme movie, which opened in limited release to American audiences yesterday.
Go here for the full article and a bigger picture.
From one of OC's dearest Swiss contacts comes scans of cover girl Cecilia Bartoli as she appeared for Migros Magazin, a free weekly from one of the biggest Switzerland department/supermarket chains, which can be found in the mailbox of practically every Swiss home.
Ceci chats about everything from plastic surgery to body image, all in anticipation of her new CD that's poised to drop, Sacrificium, a compilation of castrati arias by Baroque masters.
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Don't shoot the messenger. Lash out at Swiss director Luc Bondy for retooling Zeffirelli's nonthreatening, stately Tosca. Go ahead, he doesn't mind. Hard times call for stripped-down flamboyance, although hard times make one crave familiar creature comforts. Hence, it's impossible to please everyone, and the traditionalist audience was already sharpening their claws at the thought alone of a new Tosca. And thus the new Luc Bondy (in his Metropolitan debut, about 35 years after he debuted everywhere else -- he's old news even at dusty la Scala) production of Puccini’s Tosca opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2009-10 season to what can diplomatically be described as "mixed" reviews where no production team member was free from criticism (and the singers mostly got away with it, in the usual NYC fashion).
The first season planned entirely by the team of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine, there's no one left to blame. No worries, as the opera is a co-production of Teatro alla Scala and the Bayerische Staatsoper, where it will show to Europe's blasé crowds (Daniele Gatti will conduct the Scala outing).
Too many cultural barometers for Bondy's visceral vision of Tosca, which thrusts itself on an audience yearning for nostalgia in a year fraught with crisis. Remember, it was Franco Zeffirelli's 1985 Tosca that premiered in a very different time: Ronald Reagan, yuppies with silly slicked back hair paving through big Wall Street profits, and really, our biggest foreign responsibility was famine relief in Ethiopia and trying not blow the Russians up if at all possible. Minimal, stark, intellectual stagings are nothing new for Bondy, nor is insisting upon the audience the intricacies of the libretto. Frengo's comforting, romanticized versions of Italy euthanized audiences: no Under the Tuscan Suns found here, this time, Bondy's Tosca will not do wonders for tourism -- no frozen, packaged fish already de-boned, deodorized, and de-headed.
Michael Bay or Michael Haneke? You can't have both.
Act I and a black curtain rises on the interior of Sant'Andrea della Valle. Tosca in the Napoleonic era. Cavaradossi finishes his portrait of Mary Magdalene, left breast exposed. Levine's conducting lovely and acceptable, but again, gutted of the storm and tempestuous foreshadowing that Puccini had flitted through his manuscript. A bit too maudlin and no new ideas to match Bondy's crystalline vision. We wanted a sound more harmonious with the cruel and abusive plot, more chiaroscuro, less pretty modeling. Separately, both leads showed weaknesses.
Karita Mattila sang the title role for the first time (outside of Finland -- she sang Tosca at Helsinki's Finnish National Opera in 2006) and although she poured herself into Tosca's shoes heroically, it was misplaced, and she was unable to pull the character through the full dimension. The underlying vulnerability that's overtly squandered as the opera unfolds was never there. Matilla was too haughty and severe from the beginning (stabbily destroying Cavaradossi's Mary Magdalene painting in an uncontrollable fit of jealousy, which was effective foreshadowing) focusing rather obtusely on the strengths of the character. She played a mature Tosca, contemplative and exacting. At times detached, casting Matilla in this role is like walking into Le Bernardin and ordering a hamburger: she's banked decades of successful reviews in German, Czech, and Russian (superbly singing in Salome, Eugene Onegin, Jenůfa & Kát’a Kabanová) but her Italian repertoire is too much of a stretch for the demanding soprano. And while the top of her vocal range wasn't entirely pleasant, her bottom notes were expressive without being too dark or muddled.
Marcelo Álvarez as Mario Cavaradossi at times showed-off gorgeous high notes, while his acting was convincing and thoughtful. A fine, if slightly unexciting Cavaradossi. Music Director James Levine (who made his Met debut conducting Tosca in 1971) ducked his head and forged forward with his orchestra, slowing down tempi at times that left the action on stage too static. Vissi d'arte was slowed-down to a point of nonrecognition, almost bringing the aria to a grinding halt.
George Gagnidze replaced last-minute Finnish bass-bariton, Juha Uusitalo, who pulled out as Scarpia due to illness (shame, as his Scarpia played opposite Mattila in the 2006 Finnish National Opera's Tosca). He played the menacing, cruel aristocrat without all the comedic flashings of a villain (thankfully). The one sore spot was his fateful death, a bit too hammy, all that upside-down floundering that was supposed to be gritty and visceral, but came across as drawn-out, a fish floundering for air (nor was it aided by Mattila's slightly glazed-over indifference). Bondy's big ideas were all there, but executed in a rushed, half-baked blocking. His ideas lacked full fruition, but the foundation was solid. With a different cast and different conductor, this production could be stellar: Stick around for a swapped-out (and frankly, upgraded) roster in April 2010, starring Daniela Dessì as Tosca, Jonas Kaufmann and Marcello Giordani splitting Cavaradossi, Bryn Terfel and Gagnidze sharing Scarpia, and Joseph Colaneri and Philippe Auguin with the conducting duties.
Act II's soaring assembly room of mustards and browns hearkened to Fascist Italy, with the three whores of Scarpia lounging on the red velvet couches. Shortcomings? We wish there had been more whores! As opposed to the uber-sexual Robert Carsen that always puts the thunder in our Yamamotos and trills in our panties, Bondy had difficulties with staging the eroticism of the opera, and rather, fell back on unimaginative representations of sex to provoke the lust. The excellent costumes of Milena Canonero, the Turin-born costumière and Otto Schenk co-conspirator, helped smooth over the bumps effectively as a three time Academy Award winner (for Barry Lyndon, Chariots of Fire, and Marie Antoinette, tho she also did the costumes for A Clockwork Orange, The Cotton Club, and Out of Africa).
Sets were well-constructed and elegant, designed by French set designer Richard Peduzzi (long-time collaborator with Patrice Chéreau, to which you'll see his work later this Fall in Janáček’s From the House of the Dead with Esa-Pekk) who was also making his Metropolitan Opera debut. Act III, the prison and ramparts of Castel Sant'Angelo were laid bare, elegant and understated, the perfect backdrop for such tragedy.
The traditionalists had been fearing this opening night for ages, another push that the old, craggy singers of their glory days go buried along with Zeffirelli's sets, irrelevant and mute. But Zeffirelli's going-thru-the-motions Tosca is what the Metropolitan audiences want anyway (listen, the MET is an American opera house for patriots only and it's cool and all that you like drinking tea and eating dumplings or whatever the hell they do in your third-world country for fun, but this is America and we don't have to cater to you). Europe's best intellects get filleted by the MET (Graham Vick). No (obvious) knife, no candles rolled through by the prop department -- is this what really makes a theatrically artistic vision so detestable?
Props can be left to the imagination if one is willing to stretch their comfort zones so far. Opening night at the MET, it was apparently too much to ask.
Only in New York City would an essentially conventional, prudent opera director such as Luc Bondy be considered some sort of insane, incendiary bomb-thrower, the Piero Manzoni (link mildly NSFW) of the opera world. It's New York at its most unfavorable; the city where at the opera house, blessed are the meek because new things and new ideas make the audiences nervous and desperate, where singers get standing ovations, karaoke-style, just for showing up -- the Tosca premiere no exception -- and directors don't even have to be faithful to the libretto (a highly debatable definition to begin with) but they simply should be as Zeffirelli-like as they can.
"What would Franco do?", the director is supposed to think, then act accordingly: when in doubt, over-decorate, cram mind-numbing detail into every corner to show the audience that they really got their money's worth. Oh, and sex is also a very bad, scary thing -- and anyway, some big paper critics want the rape victims to be as hot as they can be -- "She was also remarkably unsexy, which made one wonder what Scarpia was so excited about", wrote the Wall Street Journal about poor Karita Mattila, that the financial newspaper, always pragmatic, simply didn't find rape-able -- not hot enough to be attacked by Scarpia, Tosca must not have asked for it badly enough.
One is therefore worried and a bit saddened by New York that as of late, gleefully collects opera directors heads like wildlife mounts in Teddy Roosevelt's study -- first Graham Vick then Mary Zimmerman and now Luc Bondy, the latest stag sacrificed on the altar of the city's opera-going mediocrity. Only in New York, seriously, a half-a$$ed minimalist like Bondy could be depicted as some sort of deranged Calixto Bieito by an audience eager to preserve (in amber) Franco Zeffirelli's stagings for all eternity (and obviously Frengo, for all his by0tchyness, does well what he does -- his old Bohème and Tosca and Aida and more than a few other stagings are indeed well thought out and worth seeing -- but, really, how many times? Like, forever?).
"To me, Eurotrash is Zeffirelli", Graham Vick once said, and it's hard not to think of his prophecy in the middle of all this Tosca chatter.
Bondy unsurprisingly and predictably got on the nerves of opera-goers that consider stark sets an insult to the art form -- they want opera as Moulin Rouge, as a Disneyland version of a romanticized, European past that might or might not have existed in the first place. Zeffirelli obviously delivers their goods, with more taste and talent than most of his contemporaries -- he is and will always remain a 1950s man, with the happy exception of his Busseto pocket-size "Aida". An audience that essentially knows what it wants -- traditional stagings, big stars (even in the sad twilights of their careers, see Pavarotti's last hurrah), big voices, designer costumes, expensive-looking sets -- is pretty hard to deal with, especially in a time of financial crisis. And for all the "Broadway Pete" talk, once the Met audience roughs up a couple more new directors -- one can only imagine what David McVicar's Pasolini-style Salome or his orgiastic Rigoletto would ignite among the Metropolitan opera-goers -- poor Peter Gelb will basically have to hire back Zeffirelli and have him rehash his old stuff, or raise poor Jean-Pierre Ponnelle from the dead, and then Luchino, too, and usher in the glorious new age of the zombie opera directors -- zombies who, famously, like to eat brains, and in their Metropolitan opera outings would probably end up skipping dinner, if last night's reaction is anything to go by.
She was there, and you weren't. Make way for the Queen. Head Byotch in Charge, Renée Fleming, at the Metropolitan Opera's 2009/10 Season Opener on September 21, 2009.
[Update: Even more Renee after the jump!!]
Paps were out in full force to shoot the star power that turned up for the opening night of The Metropolitan Opera.
(Above and below: Henry Kissinger and wife Nancy)
(Above: A pregnant Leelee Sobieski)
(Above and below: Billy Joel and Deborah Dampiere)
Click the link below to see who else got snapped
Continue reading "Pap Shots: Metropolitan Opera's Tosca Turn-out" »
Luc Bondy (in his Metropolitan Opera premiere) unveils his new production of Puccini's Tosca to open the 2009/10 season, tonight at 6:30pm. Filling Bondy's on-stage vision is Karita Mattila as Tosca (singing the role for the first time outside of her native Finland), Marcelo Álvarez as Cavaradossi, George Gagnidze as Scarpia, and James Levine on the podium.
If you won't be in the Metropolitan Opera audience tonight, the Met makes it super easy to be part of the Tosca opening night festivities, even without a ticket. The performance will be transmitted live from the opera house to multiple jumbotrons in both Times Square and Lincoln Center's Robertson Plaza. Both events are free, but tickets are required for the Lincoln Center broadcast (which were handed out yesterday...sucks for you if you missed it)! If you missed the crush for Lincoln Center tickets, you can head down to Times Square, where 2,000 free seats await crowds on a first-come, first-serve basis (there'll also be standing room provisions).
Housebound fans can also listen to the performance by going to the Metropolitan Opera's website, which will offer a live audio stream on their website (albeit via Real Player's cumbersome software). You can also listen on Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS channel 78 and XM Channel 79.
You can also catch this Tosca when the production inaugurates the MET's "Live in HD" season on October 10th, where the Saturday matinée performance will be transmitted live to movie theaters around the country.
Bondy's Tosca will have eight performances total, starting tonight and ending on Saturday, October 17 -- plus a revival in April & May with Philippe Auguin conducting Daniela Dessi's Tosca (*unf unf unf*) with Jonas Kaufmann and Marcello Giordani splitting the role of Cavaradossi, and Bryn Terfel as Scarpia.