Met opera season 2016 17

One of the most hotly anticipated parts of every Met Opera season has to be the Live in HD Series.Arguably the most successful aspect of Peter Gelb’s tenure with the company, the video recordings of live performances work on so many levels. Not only do they connect with audiences worldwide, but they immortalize performances and interpretations of beloved works and performers for years and years to come. Knowing that you will be able to continually go back to a great performance is a treasure that is so hard to come by in live theater and the Met’s ability to capitalize on this is fantastic.Here are the HD performances for the 2017-18 season.“Norma” (October 7): After its opening night, Bellini’s opera will be featured on the HD series for the time with Sondra Radvanovsky, Joseph Calleja and Joyce DiDonato in the leading roles.“Die Zauberflöte” (October 14): James Levine conducts Rene Pape, Golda Schultz, Kathryn Lewek, Charles Castronuovo and Markuys Werba in the Mozart classic.“The Exterminating Angel” (November 18): Composer Thomas Adès conducts his own opera in a production that includes Audrey Luna, Alice Coote, Iestyn Davies, Sally Matthews, David Portillo and Amanda Echalaz among others.“Tosca” (January 27): David McVicar’s new production will mark the third time Puccini’s masterpiece is put on HD. This time Kristine Opolais and Jonas Kaufmann will star in the work with Bryn Terfel as the villanous Scarpia. Andris Nelsons conducts. UPDATE: Vittorio Grigolo will sing the role of Cavaradossi instead of Jonas Kaufmann “L’Elisir d’Amore” (February 10): Pretty Yende, hot off a tremendous 2016-17 season with the company stars opposite Matthew Polenzani in the Donizetti comedy. Ildebrando D’Arcangelo and Davide Luciano play Dulcamara and Belcore respectively while Domingo Hindoyan conducts.“La Bohème” (February 24): Sonya Yoncheva, Susanna Phillips and Michael Fabiano star in Puccini’s timeless masterwork.“Semiramide” (March 10): Angela Meade takes on the iconic title role with Elzabeth DeShong, Javier Camarena, Ildar Abdrazakov and Ryan Speedo Green rounding out the cast. Maurizio Benini conducts.“Così fan tutte” (March 31): David Robertson conducts Phelim McDermott’s new production which stars Amanda Majeski, Serena Malfi, Ben Bliss, Adam Platchetka, Christopher Maltman and Kelly O’Harra.“Luisa Miller” (April 14): Plácido Domingo, Sonya Yoncheva and Piotr Beczala lead the starry cast in Verdi’s timeless tale.“Cendrillon” (April 28): Joyce DiDonato will lead Massenet’s cinderella story in the Met’s first ever production of the work. Alice Coote, Laurent Naouri, Stephanie Blythe and Kathleen Kim round out the cast.Which HD Performance Are You Most Excited For?

Requests that it be discontinued.” A few people, of course, attended the Met to listen to opera. One middle-classmusic lover complained that the incessant chatter from the private boxes drowned out his favorite arias. A response in the New York press dismissed the complaint and confirmed the social order: “It is very certain that these magnificent music-dramas are only made possible for him by the more ornate portion of the community.”Experimentation. A parade of respected performers — including Lehmann, Marcella Sembrich, Italo Campanini, Adelina Patti, Etelka Gerster, Albert Niemann, Lillian Norton-Gower, Marianne Brandt, Max Alvary, and Julius Perotti—graced the Met stage during its first decade. Backstage, however, chaos reigned. Under the direction of the theatrical entrepreneur Henry E. Abbey (1846-1896), the Met lost some $600,000 during the 1883-1884 season. Under Abbey’s replacement, Leopold Damrosch (1832-1885), the company performed only German opera. Critics raved but audiences dozed. Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936), a leading humorist of the era, satirized the reputation of Germanic opera:“That’s Wagner,” she says. “Tis th’ music iv the future,” she says. “Yes,” says Donahue, “but I don’t want me hell on earth. I can wait f’ r it.”After Damrosch died in 1885, his son Walter (1862-1950) succeeded him and continued to stage German opera through the fall of 1891. At this juncture, however, Damrosch’s contract expired, and the Met reverted to more crowd-friendly Italian and French fare. (The first Met performance of an American opera, Frederick Shepherd Converse’s The Pipe of Desire, occurred in 1910.) By the turn of the century the Met had finally achieved a level of stability in its finances and artistic philosophy, but before it became a repository of “high culture,” it had traversed some exceptionally low terrain.SourceIrving Kolodin, The Story of the Metropolitan Opera Company, 1883-1950: A Candid History (New York: Knopf, 1953).

Recently in Performances Madam Butterfly at ENO Anthony Minghella's visually-arresting staging, a co-production with New York's Metropolitan Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera, returned this month to its original home at the London Coliseum after a gap of two years. Awesome Angelika Again While I eagerly seized upon an opportunity to hear Angelika Kirschlager live for the first time, having written in very recent weeks about not one but two of the star mezzo’s current CD releases, I ventured to Frankfurt’s Alte Oper feeling a little bit like her stalker. Karita Mattila Performs Manon Lescaut When I worked in the Archives of the Met, I was custodian of several hundred costumes, many from the days when divas traveled with steamer trunks full of things run up just for them, by the finest designers, with the most glamorous materials, in the colors and styles that suited the ladies themselves. Verdi's Falstaff at Chicago There is nothing redeeming about Sir John Falstaff, one of Shakespeare’s most lively comic characters and the subject of Verdi’s final opera, and yet, inexplicably, we love him. Two Queens in Full Cry What constitutes an “international opera star” these days, anyway? Die Walküre at the Met The Metropolitan Opera audience loves its Wagner, and the management for the last several decades has, alas, made sure we aren’t spoiled: it’s a rare season that gets more than two production revivals of Wagner, and some years there have been none. Deborah Voigt in Concert with the San Francisco Symphony With her performance of the “Four Last Songs,” ably partnered by Michael Tilson Thomas and his San Francisco Symphony, Deborah Voigt emphatically confirmed her place as one of the glories of the current roster of Strauss interpreters. John Adams' Doctor Atomic in Chicago John Adams, whose opera Nixon in China set the bar for post-minimalism in the lyric theatre, has once again scored a success with his latest work. A New Hansel und Gretel at the Met Wagner’s all-conquering chic made apocalyptic music-dramas drawn from folklore the ideal of the nationalistic era; every serious opera composer of the time felt obliged to attempt something in that line. Oppenheimer opera charts new course in music In this country art and politics are rarely bedfellows — strange or otherwise; indeed, it’s seldom that the two meet under the same roof. Iphigénie en Tauride at the Met Regarded, until the modern vogue for earlier masters, as the senior surviving grand master of opera, Gluck never quite becomes fashionable and never quite vanishes. Prokofiev's War and Peace at the Met There is no middle ground in War and Peace — or, rather, it’s all middle ground, like a battlefield, and you may feel as