Adriana Lecouvreur is an opera sneered at by cognoscenti. It’s by Italian composer Francesco Cilea, 1866 – 1950, who “composed some decent piano music which is little known”, according to one sniffy commentator. First performed in Milan in 1902, Enrico Caruso starred...
My opera-fanatic friend, whose company I enjoyed at the Met for a performance of Carmen on Monday, sent me a lengthy review the following day – “Pftt!” Never thought four letters could convey so much. Disappointment; dismissal; frustration. This season’s revival of...
“Buy one, get one free”! “BOGOF” – a marketing strategy now condemned by the environmentally overwrought – is a compelling sales gimmick, for soapsuds, socks (a bit complicated as you actually get 4), even opera. So, when the Met went further and announced the staging...
I wonder if Arrigo Boito was a fan of Schopenhauer? Yes, I hear you say, “I’ve often wondered that, too… but who the hell is Arrigo Boito? And is Schopenhauer that chap who played for Bayern Munich in the 60’s?” This idle musing is prompted by someone – me – who had...
There’s nothing quite like a right good disemboweling to grab an audience’s attention. Not some namby-pamby, sleight of hand, bloodless execution with fancy retractable blades. No, no, I’m talking about the full blown, machete to the torso, chest hacking,...
New York Metropolitan Opera’s first time production of Massenet’s Cendrillon (“Cinderella” for those of us more familiar with the brothers Grimm version than that of French writer Charles Perrault 1697) is no fairy tale. Producer Laurent Pelly tells us what we all...
John Adams’ new oeuvre, Girls of the Golden West does for California romantic gold rush mythology what his earlier opera, Dr. Atomic, did for the idea that the Manhattan project was a smoothly run scientific operation. It blows it apart. Premiered in San Francisco...
“Man, I’m tellin’ you, it’s a lapazoo”! Come on, you remember, lyrics from “The Charleston”, that flapper dance number named after South Carolina’s historic, colonial gem, which “at last got you (South Carolina) on the map”? That was in the “Roaring 20’s”. Now, in the...