Opera isn't everyone's 'cup of tea' but I'm happy to try and convince folk to try it even though they may never 'buy it'. It's so heartening that the Met Opera on Demand have so many top notch contemporary productions with the word's greatest voices (let alone the archive of great voices from the past). The 1993 Troyanos/Marton Tannhäuser is an exemplar of how this opera should be sung and Otto Shenk's production, of its time, yet full of small revealing details in both the chorus and principals. Then there's Macbeth (don't meet Maria Guleghina on a dark night she blow you away), Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Lucia di Lammermoor, the booed and cheered Tosca from the great Luc Bondy (not so revered by the great, alas, curmudgeonly Zefferelli) with stunning costumes by Academy Award-winning designer Milena Canonero and an amazing Karita Mattila.
Just a few of the Met's recent free daily streams. Book for Renée Fleming this Saturday (only $20 live from the music salon of Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.).
I loved Deborah Warner's production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (again the Met Opra) conducted by Gergiev with Anna Netrebko as ever believable as the girl who's heart is fired and torn.
Everyone must see, though, a Barrie Kosky opera production. His Eugene Onegin truly is a "lonely, forgotten village…shady garden" that could so easily be Westchester, Atlanta, Oregon wherever in 2020! It's the final day on OperaVision (well, I did mention it a month or so ago!). You don't get Netrebko or Gergiev but like in all opera plots what you get and it certainly ain’t always thus in productions, is sheer beauty, sadness and transcendence. Kosky's Pelleas was the same. Productions as such bring hope to what seems so easily a dying world for opera and orchestras. One must never ever forget the inexorable power of great talent meeting belief, vision, passion, conviction. OperaVision's 'gala' had a plethora a great talent relatively unknown outside their European houses except for Nina Stemme. Did you know that Kosky can totally outplay you with Yiddish operetta on the piano!
Even bus drivers (if indeed they were ever once the 'Zeffirelli' of driving) resort to insulting tactics to keep their meagre position in the boring hierarchy of life, not letting me board this morning with my few meager slants of wood from Home Depot. Interesting that two drivers in succession described them as 'sticks'. I lugged them home on the streets. Shame on you. In business terms that sort of collusion is called insider fascist trading. Ok. See how you like like what my little sticks can really do! I have all the time in the world! Scarpia is only a few steps away. I see very clearly. How happy they were then…But no more!
Sure the Met doesn't like this when I tell some home truths (plenty more to tell), but isn't this all the human hypocrisy that brings you gazzillons of dollars at the box office when sumg by Fleming, Netrebko et al. Careful of of the hypocrisy P.G. A total complicity of silence, especially in New York. Yet lovely kind gentle caring folk like John Copley get crucified by 'witch hunting'! Tread very, very carefully…..u ain’t gonna find that so easy with me……
Have a great recital Renée, forgive me for sounding off a wee bit. Luc;)
If people have similar experiences to mine (goodness knows, no one person could possibly have as many of those bad experiences over the decades as me!) I'd love to hear about them. I felt a wee bit better when a 'someone' I met the following day related how 'they' tried to board their regular ferry with a shopping cart with a piece of molding sicking out. They refused boarding. Hello! An open air 10min ferry ride yet treated like some shopping terrorist. My 'friend' snapped it in half and said, satisfied. I had a Whitney Museum experience (old Whitney) long time ago and I wasn't trying to be difficult or provocative, but when I held my bag up against the dimensional placard and it was within the 'legal limits' that security guard's face! Get a life, 'mother'. And get rid of the folk at The Met Opera Peter Gelb who are like that. Now's your chance. They are the death to creativity, the death to union relations, and ultimately death to themselves.
Back in the 2006's onwards when I advocated film/opera/arts journalism (especially independent) online will be the future many folk looked at me like I was indeed crazy. Wasn't it about that time that Met Opera G.M. Peter Gelb started advocating filming their opera productions? That idea never caught on, did it! ;)
Funny scene in a not so bad movie that was universally panned Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, when Carell and Knightley are driving somewhere the day before the world is about to end. And a cop pulls them over for speeding (no-one for thousands of miles!) and plonks them in the clink for the night. Now how many of those 'jobsworths' (English term) are they in your life? Get rid of them. Re-deploy them some place where they can do no harm. Trump's re-election campaign, maybe:) That said, don't think those 'deadwoods' would last a day with Trump. Disinfectant here we go! (That's an observation not a political endorsement;)
A man is not a man until he's got a tree.
Weird-ask: all the pillows in [Kitty's] room must have a cat-design on them.
Moral of all that is: always carry a chain saw in one's handbag. Fits nicely. You never know when one may have to saw some 'sticks' and find a place to 'shove them'!
t’b’
c”t
