Opera
Marilyn Assoluta: Tribute to a Bountiful Horne
The Metropolitan Opera Guild’s luncheon honoring Marilyn Horne Oct. 31 was admiring, affectionate and moving, but not syrupy—Horne herself wouldn’t have stood for that. The mezzo-soprano has been an irrepressible comedienne on stage and off, and is just as apt to be wry at her own expense as about any other topic. At the Guild’s...
Joan Sutherland: Becoming and Remembering
Last May, seven months after Dame Joan Sutherland died at age 83, the Metropolitan Opera Guild held a memorial tribute to her at Town Hall. It’s been at the back of my mind ever since: there was a lot to take in. A short video biography was aired. There was footage of live and television...
Opera Review: Nabucco at The Met
Elijah Moshinsky’s 2001 production of Verdi’s Nabucco is back in the Met repertory this season after a six-year hiatus, and it’s as deliciously garish as ever. The opera was Verdi’s third, but his first real hit, and it’s no wonder. Set in Jerusalem and Babylon in the 6th century BCE, the opera tracks the tale...
Don Giovanni at Mostly Mozart
Two things mesmerized at the Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater the other night. This first-ever production of Don Giovanni at the venerable Mostly Mozart festival featured some of the loveliest, soaring, velvety voices imaginable, and strikingly innovative staging with the chorus members spray painted silver, and assuming poses as props and extras against a plain black...
When Ballet and Music Are Equal Partners
Rodion Shchedrin at Lincoln Center, plus Koji Attwood at Mannes Early in its season, the Lincoln Center Festival highlighted the music of Rodion Shchedrin. Rather, the festival gave a taste of Shchedrin’s music—there’s a lot of it. He has become one of the most popular classical composers of today. Why’s that? For one thing, he’s...
Stranded in Neo-Classicism
When you get right down to it, much of ballet choreography could be considered simply a matter of putting venerable folk dance steps and patterns on pointe. And also when you get right down to it, much of Western literary and theatrical narrative over the last twomillennia can be viewed as a chronology of Greek...
Weirdness at the Winter Garden
Rufus Wainwright and City Opera join forces City Opera arranged one of the weirdest musical evenings I have ever attended. The evening was a combination of pretentiousness, vulgarity, sincerity and sweetness. City Opera dubbed it “Rufus Wainwright Goes to the Opera!” That exclamation point seems to try a little too hard. The event was part...
Rufus Wainwright Goes to the Opera
Thousands gathered in an atrium off the Hudson River last night to hear a free concert by Rufus Wainwright and friends. A diverse crowd of young and old sat in chairs, plopped down on steps, and stood where they could for a selection of Wainwright’s favorite arias, personal hits, and selections from his new opera Prima...
Let’s Hear It For the Words
Strauss’ ‘Capriccio’ is an ideal vocal and acting vehicle for Renée Fleming John Cox’s production of Richard Strauss’ Capriccio was revived this season at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time since its premiere in 1998—the first time the Met had ever performed it. Updated from the 18th-century to the 1920s, it supplied Renée Fleming with...
Lights of Old St. Petersburg
Karita Mattila returns as Lisa in ‘Queen of Spades’ The alienation of Gherman—paradigm of 19th-century Russian literature’s “superfluous man”—dominates the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Tchaikovsky’s 1890 The Queen of Spades. Designed by Mark Thompson, a giant picture frame forms an interior proscenium. Gherman frequently stands outside it, peering in at the society with which he’s...
A Very Deep Russian Voice
Vladimir Ognovenko, long associated with Varlaam in ‘Boris Godunov,’ remains fascinated with Mussorgsky’s interpretation The pressroom of the Metropolitan Opera almost shivers as bass Vladimir Ognovenko demonstrates different tones, resonances and textual responses to augment interview points he wants to make. In 2001, Ognovenko was called “Russia’s finest bass” by the late John Ardoin in...
Three Conductors and Two Violinists
And three orchestras and an OOMP Paavo Järvi is the son of Neeme Järvi, one of the most underrated conductors of our time—Neeme, I mean. Paavo is a conductor himself, and a very good one. (His brother, Kristjan, is also a conductor.) In recent years, he has visited New York with the chamber orchestra he...
Surround-Sound Spectacular
A Berlioz Requiem, a pianist and a soprano The stage of Carnegie Hall—which we are asked to call the Ronald O. Perelman Stage—was about as full as it could be. There was a healthy orchestra, with gleaming timpani on either side. Behind the orchestra, there was a massive chorus. What were they all gathered for,...
Netrebko Then & Now
The diva is perfectly suited for the hi-def days of opera Anna Netrebko is back onstage in New York this month in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Don Pasquale, and that’s good for the Met and it’s good for the art form itself. The Russian soprano galvanizes the public and makes opera something accessible as...
Found in Translation
English opera singer Mark Glanville’s most ambitious idea came to him in the middle of the night three years ago—to take Schubert’s song cycle, Die Winterreise, what he called “the greatest song cycle that’s ever been written,” and reinvent it in a Yiddish context.
Post-Modern, Post-Racial Roots Revival
The charm of the Carolina Chocolate Drops Sophisticated New Yorkers will sing along with old-timey fiddle, guitar, mandolin and banjo-playin’, from those foot-stompin’ and harmonizin’ younguns—provided they are friendly, attractive and talented post-racial post-modernists. Proof was provided Feb. 2 by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Grammy-nominated trio who played the Allen Room of Jazz at...
All Hands On Deck
Ran Dank & Vassilis Varvaresos live and perform together Ran Dank and Vassilis Varvaresos seem like typical New York City roommates: Both are in their late twenties and live in a four-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights, which they share with two other friends. Their kitchen contains a pile of Domino’s pizza boxes, and they indulge...
The Gift of ‘Just Rightness’
James Levine and the Met Orchestra, plus Joshua Rifkin at (Le) Poisson Rouge A great concern of the music world lately has been the health of James Levine. On a recent Sunday afternoon, he took the stage of Carnegie Hall to lead his Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He had the help of a cane. Then he...
The Promised Land
Composer Yoav Gal’s entrancing chamber opera Mosheh is familiar to anyone who follows the city’s contemporary opera scene since it has been presented in any number of in-progress productions over the past five years. The opera received a semi-staged concert performance at Merkin Hall in 2006, has had excerpts performed by several new New York...
