Sharpenicity

Mozart’s Idomeneo lives! Almost 200 years since  a 24-year old Mozart first composed and conducted Idomeneo, the Metropolitan Opera  in 1982 created this production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle.  James Levine who was prime mover for the that production,  conducted it anew for the Met HD viewers all over the world on March 25, 2017. How do you describe an opera like Idomeneo ? For one thing, you don’t talk about the plot which includes among other things, serious father-son relationship issues, not unlike Abraham and  Isaac situation of God (in this case since post-Trojan war times) Neptune,  ordering a slaying of the innocent son.   This is only one of so many unbelievable situations to give opportunities for sublime singing.  Any attempt to follow a plot line is besides the point.  It’s the music which is convincing that serious human emotions are at stake here. The cast is sublime.  Alice Coote is Idamante who is in...

Dvorak’s masterpiece lyric opera is about a water nymph who wants to transform herself into a human being to know the love of a prince. That formula has been used for myths of a Slavic   water-sprite, Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid , Jean Giraudoux’s Ondine , Disney’s Ariel and other fairy tale heroines who have attempted brave transformation into human forms, only to be dashed and doomed into eternal disappointment.     Rusalka  is a wave in the water, a beam from the moon, the ultimate in romantic fantasy,  a being that truly puts her whole self into a love relationship.  Rusalka (Kristine Opolais)  dwells in the Met’s opera Mary Zimmerman’s production in a lush fantasy world, with her Water Gnome father (Eric Owens) and her dancing sisters - green garbed sprites who sprint about  along watery ponds in a deep dark dense forest.  She meets the prince  (Brandon Jovanovich) while he was trying to shoot a white...

Roméo et Juliette Their love is here to stay! Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo in a new production of Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette”  are being praised for their chemistry.  Is it “ A marriage  of true minds.” Here’s what they told a NYTimes writer: GRIGOLO:  It’s not out of nothing.  It’s like when you want to make a dish in the kitchen, you have good prime materials. Good tomato, good zucchini, good fish. Everything is so fresh. You just need to put it on the grill.   Me, Diana, a good conductor, a good director:  The ingredients are so good that it’s going to come out something nice. DAMRAU: It’s true. GRIGOLO: You just do the right thing. Just do it for real. We never fake it. DAMRAU: The kissing we fake. GRIGOLO;  What?  I don’t fake it.  I never fake it. So much for “he said/she said” discussions—especially when he and she sing  four stunning duets in Romeo and Juliet...

NABUCCO       A PRODUCTION FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS What becomes a legend most?  Remember that 1968 ad campaign that became a legend of its own almost fifty years ago.  That was the year that  Placido Domingo made his official debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York  when he substituted with little notice for Franco Corelli in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur with Renata Tebaldi.   Who remembers that?   Who will ever forget Domingo in  the Met Opera Simulcast  of January 7, 2017,  of Verdi’s Nabucco ?  As Domingo adds a new role to his Met repertory as the Babylonian ruler Nabucco, Liudmyla Monastyrska sings the tour-de-force role of Abigaille, Nabucco’s willful daughter, with Jamie Barton as Fenena, Russell Thomas as Ismaele and Dmitri Belosselskiy as the prophet Zaccaria, Nacucco which is so seldom seen, was Verdi’s third opera and the one that  launched   his stunning career.   Aida b...

MOBY DICK A Giant White Whale was spotted near the Wharf on November 18.    No ordinary one was it, but the fabulous fabled  Moby Dick  arriving at Arena Stage!    Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company’s had sailed with the classic nineteenth century Melville novel of New England whalers with their harpoons and ships, into this twenty-first century theater at the Southwest waterfront. Moby Dick   is not just another fish story.  That very long Great American novel which many people find unreadable has now taken its legs to the stage.    Lookingglass Theatre Company’s exuberant production  while true to Melville’s words and spirit magically interjects both humor and silence into a script that waves between lyrical and dramatic.      Rather than overload the scenery with authentic looking antiques from that era of New England whalers, this staging employs a unifying sy...

  L’Amour de Loin The Met’s opera sets sail upon A Sea of Love Do you remember that oldie “Sea of Love”?…  Come with me …To the sea …The sea of love - I wanna tell you -How much-I love you.”   How simple that song made love  and the sea - both eternal -seem to be.  But for all its beauty and allure,  the sea —like love— is vast and deep and dangerous.     In  L’Amour de Loin- the Met’s Live in HD broadcast— the sea is the fourth and very complex character in this tale of medieval love. The title of the opera comes from the poetry of troubadour Jaufre Rudel who developed  the concept of “love from afar.”  In the time of the Second Crusade in the 12th century, the poet fell in love with a Countess in Tripoli, a beautiful woman whom he had never seen but had dreamed of  in his works.   It is the sea which  separates the lovers and it is across the sea, that the poet will take his fateful journey t...

MOZART’S THE MAGIC FLUTE   -  TEN YEARS SINCE THE FIRST MET Live in HD BROADCAST Five things you need to know about the Met’s Live in HD of Mozart’s The Magic Flute . on December 3, 2016. 1.  T he Magic Flute was the first broadcast that launched the Met’s award winning series Live in HD   to movie theaters in 2006.   A hundred operas since then, Live in HD has proven to be a resounding success.  And it all started with that magic moment when The Magic Flute kicked it off ten years ago. 2.  This production is filled with opera legendaries.  Director Julie Taymour,  Maestro James Levine, and an ensemble cast –  Nathan Gunn, Ying Huang, Matthew Polenzani, Erika Miklosa, and René Pape—all  together create a magical stage event. 3.  Tenor Matthew Polenzani might be the prince hero of the opera but  guess who takes the honors as being one of the sexiest men alive;   Papageno, his sideki...