chickenfeet

Yesterday's Met HD broadcast of Wagner's Parsifal was one of the best I've seen.  More...

Yesterday's live broadcast from the Met was Berlioz' epic, in every sense, Les Troyens.  More...

Today's MetHD broadcast was Thomas Adès' The Tempest.  Read more...

The Metropolitan Opera has announced the schedule for the live HD cinema broadcasts for the 2012/13 season. Read my entirely objective and unbiased guide to what to see and what not to bother with. It also gives dates, times, casts, conductors etc so may actually be useful.

The Met's The Enchanted Island just doesn't cut the mustard. More...

After all the negative reviews of Des McAnuff's Faust at the Met expectations were low for today's HD broadcast. It wasn't perfect but it was thought provoking. More...

Review of today's MetHD broadcast of Wagner's Siegfried.

Donizetti's Anna Bolena was today's Metropolitan Opera "Live in HD" broadcast. My reaction.

Today's MetHD broadcast was Bellini's La Sonnambula. This is a new and rather controversial production by Mary Zimmerman. By and large it's had a mixed reception from critics and audience both. The plot is pretty slim. There is an engaged couple in an alpine village. The female half of which (Armina) sleepwalks herself compromisingly into the bed of a count who is staying at the local inn. It being opera she is then rejected angrily by her betrothed but, since this is a comedy, she doesn't go mad, stab people and die after singing about it at great length. Instead all is cleared up by the kindly count and everyone lives happily ever after. It's pretty slight. In an attempt to make a bit more out of it Zimmerman does the play within a play thing setting the work in a rehearsal space in New York City with the various relationships in the opera proper being parallelled in the cast. It sort of works for the first scene which is just really about flirting and jealousy although what the Count is supposed to be in relation to the rehearsing opera company is a bit weird. It gets weirder in the second scene where the Count is apparently dossing in the rehearsal space. Presumably this is because there are no hotels in New York. Somehow Armina manages to sleepwalk into the rehearsal space. Nobody seems to find it odd that someone would walk barefoot in a nightdress across Manhattan (in winter) without getting molested. It just gets messier from there culminating in a slapstick finale with the cast now in full costume as jolly alpine peasants running through some truly over the top choreography. So no, Pinter could get away with this kind of plot device but he showed a bit more restraint.

Fortunately the performances were really very good indeed. Natalie Dessay as Armina displayed all her very considerable talents as a comedienne and without them it really would have been dismal. Michele Pertusi was a wonderful Count Rodolfo. He sang splendidly and had a gift for comic timing not far short of Dessay. He also looked every inch the aristocrat. Juan Domingo Florez played Juan Domingo Florez with his usual athleticism and amazing vocal range and power. He really is the definitive romantic tenor. I also really liked Jennifer Black's sly Lisa. Other parts, chorus and orchestra were more than acceptable. So, a flawed production but enjoyable if one didn't stop to think too much about the plot flaws.

I'm really not convinced by Mary Zimmerman as an opera director. She's trying too hard. The false cleverness in La Sonnambula didn't work and her Lucia was made even sillier than usual by moving the setting to the late 19th century. Much of what went on this afternoon was about as plausible as the idea that a country house party in the Lothians in the 1870s could feature vendetta, murder, forced marriage and the threat of beheading for treason.

When opera works, it really works. Today's performance of Gluck's Orfeo was a case in point. This is a work that was written at a time when ballet was still a big part of opera and there are several bits that really need dance to make them work. I'm not a big dance expert so I guess my judgement is suspect but I thought Mark Morris' choreography was brilliant and the dancers were just superb. It was a blend of modern and more classical styles and very effective. I was particularly struck by the finale, "The Triumph of Love" , where he had multiple couples dancing fairly conventional MF figures but he has MF, FF and MM couples dancing the figures and it's beautiful and affecting (and maybe builds on some of the more general optimism of the last few days). For the rest, the singing was superb. The first few notes from Stepanie Blythe (Orfeo) were electrifying and she didn't let up. All of the big set pieces were superb culminating, of course, with a tear jerking "Che Faro". Danielle de Niese was gorgeous and vocally flawless as Euridice and Heidi Grant Murphy made a pleasantly sly Amor. Add the Met orchestra and chorus doing what they do and maestro Levine in the pit and one really has a a recipe for near perfect opera. Which it was.