So: the Met Opera is not exactly live online but certainly not dead! It's 1997 production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin streamed on Sunday. A first Met Onegin for the now world renowned baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky (I kept the press pack for something he did back then!.reading the tea leaves…). In a box with Liza, Walter Benjamin, Zaha Hadid, Martian invations- maybe the box is gone. Thieves, Kitty, alas !
Renée Fleming, Onegin’s friend Lenski (Ramón Vargas) - it was a dream cast (though maybe not immediately apparent back then-wait maybe getting my decades muddled..;). What sets and costumes by Michael Levine-a wondrous world of autumn leaves 'vanished into thin air' as Shakespeare kinda spake by love. Stage director-Robert Carsen.
This is what the Met Opera did/does best. Amazing casting, simple neo stage production ('pace' the great Zeffirelli, though, arguably the Lepage Ring was greatness fraught with…). Yet so striking is the simple evocation of the story it would work on any stage in the world!
Now: Wagner's Tristan and Isolde conducted by Sir Simon Rattle for the next day or so. I missed this on its initial Met outing. I will be riveted! Still haven't got ye ode home theater working after all these years;) but, like a need that to discern ……
Safe creatures everyone….
What's a little freaky sometimes is you see/hear/write something THEN you see your ideas synchronous with others. When I referenced Ibsen's Wild Duck above (for Kitty) I swear to you I hadn't heard Stuart Skelton's (Tristan) comments on Ibsen in the Live Stream back stage interviews, nor Sir Simon's!. Freaky! It's an important sign in one's artistic existence. The same when I listened to Furtwängler since a long time. Was engrossed by the energy in the maestro's pauses. Intense, Palpable. Then I read a few weeks ago (soon after) that, was it Maestro Gergiev spake the same in an interview. Freaky.
This has happened, for me, time and time again (luckily, thankfully). So there you go: trust your instincts. Trust your inner creature!
Woof! Tristan's stage director Mariusz Treliński, the cast, and of course, maestro Sir Simon Rattle.
