La Rondine

Jan. 10th, 2009 04:38 pm
chickenfeet: (cleopatra)
Today's MetHD broadcast was Puccini's La Rondine. The plot is opera standard implausible but it has some really good, typical, Puccini, vocal and orchestral writing. I imagine itcould be a bit dull because of the plot holes but the Met had cast real life married couple Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna as the lovers Magda/Paulette and Ruggero. The chemistry between the two was really very good. There's a lot of singing about the mystery of love in the first act but the real mystery is how Gheorghiu's dress stays on in the third act given the industrial strength pawing she's getting from her partner. The singing was pretty good considering that, apparently, Gheorghiu had a bad cold and the weather recently hasn't been kind to singers generally. I particularly liked Lisette Orepasa as, appropriately, Lisette. I think we'll see a lot more of her in comic and soubrette roles. One feels sure a Met Despina is in her future. (She's already done Susanna as an understudy).

The broadcast production was pretty good. I thought the sound balance was off in the first ten minutes or so but it seemed to get fixed and there was a couple of seconds of dropped sound in the third act. Otherwise I thought they did fine with camera angles and so on.
chickenfeet: (cleopatra)
Yesterday's MetHD broadcast was Massenet's Thais. Renee Fleming sang the title with Tom Hampson as the monk Athenael. Like most operas the plot is a bit implausible. I'm guessing it's supposed to be set c. 4th CE because there are still pagans in Alexandria but that wouldn't really explain why the nuns in Act 3 are using the Roman liturgy or how Thais could be a well known actress. Still, it's fun. Here's a synopsis. Athenael has just been on a visit from his desert monastery to his home town of Alexandria which he finds to have been corrupted by the courtesan Thais. He resolves to convert her. This is bound to lead to problems as he is having wet dreams about her. (Renee gyrating in tight flesh coloured Lacroix number in the background). He returns to the city to find that his old buddy Nicias (Michael Schade) is Thais' current keeper. Nicias also has a couple of other buxom chicks on the staff (Ginger Costa-Jackson playing Myrtale and Alyson Cambridge as Crobyle) who dress Athenael for the coming festivities in a scene that's curiously reminiscent of Castle Anthrax. Thais returns from her acting gig with a host of admirers and gets into a debate with Athenael about secular vs divine love. She seems quite excited when Athenael offers her "Pain and Suffering, Mortification of the Flesh". Actually the BDSM subtext is never far below the surface (but then this is supposed to be about Christianity). Thais kisses Athenael. Since Athenael is wearing long grubby dreads this is curiously reminiscent of Salome kissing Jokaanan (though a little more connected). Athenael flees. Thus ends Act 1.

Act 2 opens with Thais in her bedroom lamenting the fact that beauty must fade etc. This is handy because Athenael pops in to offer her Eternal Life (and Mortification of the Flesh). To cut quite a long story short Thais signs up, burns her palace and sets off to a convent in the desert with Athenael, though not without some nonsense about wanting to donate a statue of Eros to the monastery. Obviously Thais didn't do Theology 101 and doesn't get that Agape and Eros are different. (Actually, given she's supposed to be an Alexandrine one might imagine her Greek would be up to it without the Theology class.) Up to this point virtually every line Athenael has sung has been fortissimo no doubt to show his great certainty in his faith. It's a bit reminiscent of Stephen Fry as the Duke of Wellington (more shouting, that's the thing).

In Act 3 our heroes are staggering across the desert with A. bitching that T. isn't trying hard enough to keep up. She reveals that her feet are bloody. A is impressed by this and miraculously produces fruit and a jug of water. In fact bloody feet seem to be quite a turn on (no surprise there). They arrive at the convent, A. hands T. off to the mysteriously Latin nuns and returns to the monastery. While Athenael wrestles with the fact that he discovered wordly lust love accompanied by more dreams of Thais in the flesh coloured number. Meanwhile Thais is dying (probably from Mortification of the Flesh but, besides, it's the third act so the heroine is bound to die). Athenael arrives to find her wrapped and rapt in a sort of papier mache LaCroix number. He tries to unconvert her (no shouting) as she radiantly enters heaven and looks on the face of God (let's face it nobody does rapt and radiant better than Renee Fleming). Athenael loses his faith. The End.

Silly as the plot is I thoroughly enjoyed it. The music is fabulous and Fleming and Hampson were perfect in their roles both vocally and dramatically. Everything else was to the Met's usual standard and there were no annoying 'tricks' either in the stage production or in the direction for the broadcast.

Next up is Puccini's La Rondine on January 10th and Gluck's Orfeo on the 24th. It looks as if [personal profile] lemur_catta will be otherwise engaged for Orfeo so if anyone local would care to join me, I have a spare ticket.
chickenfeet: (cleopatra)
Today was the Met's broadcast of Berlioz' La Damnation de Faust in a new high tech production by Quebec superstar Robert Lepage. It was really good. Faust wasn't really intended as an opera and is more often done in concert than in a fully staged version so this really was a somewhat unusual event. Lepage's staging and direction stole the show. The set is a stacked series of cubicles forming a sort of wall on, in and through which the characters, including the chorus and large numbers of dancer and acrobats perform. At the same time, images are projected onto the 'wall'. These images are controlled by the music, the movement of the actors and even the actors' body heat. It's spectacular. The scene where Mephistopheles and Faust race off on horseback to save Marguerite was particularly memorable. If Lepage's upcoming Ring is this good it will be truly amazing.

The musical side of the production was solid to excellent. The music is very lush and the Met orchestra and chorus made the most of it. The principals were generally good, especially John Relyea as Mephistopheles. (He also had a costume to die for; red leather with an awesome hat). I was less impressed by Marcello Giordani. I thought his top notes were distinctly wobbly and harsh. I gather he's noted for the role so maybe he was just having a bad day. James Levine saw his shadow so I guess we are in for a long winter.
chickenfeet: (bull)
We left at the interval. There is some good orchestral writing but the vocal line is ditchwater dull and the libretto sucks donkey balls. The only good bit was the final aria "Batter my heart, three-person'd God" which, being John Donne, couldn't be completely awful. In fact, even the music improved a bit at this point. The rest of the libretto was mostly an extended recitative of the utmost banality including, memorably, a particularly dim general recalling how many pieces of chocolate cake he had eaten one day last September. There is only one character; Oppenheimer. The rest are cardboard cut outs. The basic premise perhaps has merit but, ultimately, Faust without Mephistopheles can't really carry an entire drama.
chickenfeet: (cleopatra)
Amazon surpassed themselves with my MetHD DVDs. Despite selecting the free delivery option I received them the day after they went on sale. I've had a quick look at The Last Emperor, viewing it on my iMac. It looks very promising. I did get a chance last night to watch a good chunk of Peter Grimes. Anybody who reads this LJ will know that I thought the production was outstanding so the following comments are specific to the DVD release.

It's standard DVD (ie not Blu-Ray) so it isn't HD in the sense the theatre broadcasts were. The sound options are LPCM stereo or DTS 5.1. The whole broadcast, including the interviews etc, is included so the performance is split across 2 DVDs. It's region free.

I played the disk on our DVD-R/VCR combo beast which certainly isn't optimal but the Denon DVD player is dying and refused to co-operate. Sound was via our 6.1 channel set up. Despite the non ideal playing conditions the sound was really good. The DTS version is nicely balanced with good dynamic range and great presence. The picture is, well, DVD quality. That used to amaze me but it now looks a bit flat compared to HD broadcasts or Blu-Ray. Still, to be fair, it's good enough for opera. All in all, it's a very good set and, at less than $30 for 168 minutes of material, quite a bargain.

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