Sharpenicity

You don’t just go someplace when you go to the opera—the opera takes you someplace!.    But while Opera  transports,  it is hardly an accurate travel guide. Consider the latest two treasures from the Met Live Simulcast. Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers) set in Ceylon. Puccini’s Turandot   set in Peking, China. Since neither Bizet nor Puccini had traveled to the Orient,  logical to bypass any  resemblance to reality, and set the scenes in ancient times, creating the   proper atmosphere of mystery and magic necessary for these rather outlandish stories.   Both Bizet and Puccini it might be noted did set other operas very specific to time and place.  Carmen is set in Serville while Tosca is possibly has the most detailed of any opera. Although  the historical events are out of order in Tosca ,  but there is no question about the scenes being  well known tourist spots in Rome. T...

What is on the stage at an opera is supposed to be grand. Save the personal chat for   the Intermission.   But the Met Simulcast production of I l Trovatore blurred that boundary when Dmitri Hvorostovsky came on stage at the Met  this past October. The audience clapped and cheered until Dmitri finally broke from his villainous baritone role of Count di Luna,  and let his sexy grin slip through.  The celebration was over his presence on stage while undergoing treatment for a brain tumor.  The curtain call on the production was also fabulous with flowers pelting the stage for Dmitri. The intermissions brought  added touches of the personal when Anna Nebrebko introduced her adorable son (who was asking his mom when were they going home.)   Dolora Zajick, whose  her first appearance  as Azucena was 25 years, with Pavarotti  as Manrico, was asked what was that like? She answered, “I lived.” So it continues— ...

APPOMATTOX-World Premiere of revised version, New Produtcion of Philiip Glass/Christopher Hamptom’s opera at the Kennedy Center-November 2015 The Washington National Opera’s Artistic Director Francesco Zambello commented in her program notes that Diaglogue of the Carmelites   on her emotions regarding this opera  based on her visit to the burial site in Paris of 14 Carmelite nuns who were  slaughtered eduring   the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, on July 17, 1794. The recent production of Appomattax had a similar resonance for me, albeit of  different places and times. Let me divert from being a critical reviewer and explain.  The  opera which has been revised, is now in two acts.  The first is set in the week in 1865, before the Civil War is officially concluded by Grant and Lee at Appomattax Court House.  The second act  is set 1965, when the Lincoln White House is now Lyndon B. Johnson’s domain and the issue is t...

It certainly looked like  Father-Daughter week at The Santa Fe Opera -August 2015.  While  Cold Mountain is the Odyssey tale of Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier/deserter  coming home to his love Abby,  the father-daughter relationships are blatant. Abby has moved to Cold Mountain because of her father’s wish. Enter Ruby, as her helper and friend, whose abusive father re-appears as a threat to the two women, alone on the mountain as the war is ending. Rigoletto centers on perhaps one of the most famous father-daughter relationships in opera, (even though Verdi might be noted  for presenting other father -daughters  like Amonasro and,Aida).  Rigoletto is a  father who does everything to save his daughter Gilda from the world and its lechers,  One  bad decision after another ends in  ultimately tragedy for both.  But it was Salome that took the theme to Freudian realms.  There is no doubt in ...