Tuesday, January 14, 2014

LA Opera Season Announcement

LA Opera has announced its season:

  • La Traviata
  • Dido & Aeneas/Bluebeard's Castle
  • Florencia en el Amazonas
  • Figaro Trilogy
    • The Ghosts of Versailles
    • The Barber of Seville
    • Le Nozze di Figaro
  • Sondra Radvanovsky in concert
  • Noah's Flood [sic; Britten called it Noye's Fludde]
  • Hercules vs. Vampires
  • Dog Days
Full details at the URL above; commentary from me another time. There are three must-sees for me; the double bill, Florencia, and Ghosts.



4 comments:

Patrick J. Vaz said...

If I had to pick only one, seriously, little to no contest: Hercules vs Vampires. I'm not saying I might not regret that choice afterwards, but there it is.

Henry Holland said...

About 20 years ago, the Los Angeles Philharmonic made a big deal about a project that paired film composers with film makers to create new pieces. Hercules vs. Vampires isn't even that interesting, it's something that dozen of orchestras do now, screen an old film (in this case, 1961's Hercules in the Haunted World) --it sounds like MST3K fodder-- with some unknown composer writing a new score.

Nice to see we get the Catan instead of SFO as rumored, but really? A Figaro trilogy? And what possible connection, either thematically or musically, is there between the Purcell and Bartok?

Once again, Conlon's insistence that the Recovered Voices project is still viable turns out to be false. It looks like the promised Die Tote Stadt is never going to happen.

I guess Domingo's announced retirement after the 2013 season was another lie.

Anonymous said...

Most boring season in the company's history, excepting Ghosts and maybe Bluebeard. Tired old replays with some really uninspired casting. Florencia is really a watery derivative bore that adds up to nothing. Villaroel will be a voiceless disaster in it. The whole thing is sad.

Lisa Hirsch said...

> And what possible connection, either thematically or musically, is there between the Purcell and Bartok?

Misery in love. I actually think they will make an interesting contrast, given the lightweight orchestration of the Purcell and the grandeur of the Bartok.

For a pretty short season there are several items that would interest me. I'll certainly come down to see whether Ghosts of Versailles is any good, and since I love the Bartok....