Oddities: the multiple appearances of Turandot during the season, with Christine Goerke, Lise Lindstrom, Jennifer Wilson, and Nina Stemme.
Broadcast schedule:
The 2015-16 season of The Met: Live in HD will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Peabody and Emmy Award-winning series with live transmissions of 10 Saturday matinees to movie theaters around the world. The HD season opens on October 3 with Il Trovatore and continues withOtello (October 17), Tannhäuser (October 31), Lulu (November 21); Les Pêcheurs de Perles(January 16); Turandot (January 30); Manon Lescaut (March 5); Madama Butterfly (April 2);Roberto Devereux (April 16); and Elektra (April 30).More later when I get the formatting right on the whole press release.
I guess the way to avoid controversy over contemporary operas, is to not produce any. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteI didn't run the full press release because they sent it as a PDF and the formatting disappears in a copy & paste (and it's the length of a short novel), but they've got some new work under development. Of course, of the several items they put into development a few years ago, none made it to the stage.
ReplyDeleteThere IS a commission to Nico Muhley and one to Ades ("The Exterminating Angel") and maybe more, but yeah: the most recent opera on 15-16 is Lulu.
For me, it's not even that they don't do new stuff or even stuff written in the last 20 years (though L'amour de Loin is supposed to be done in 2016-17), it's that they ignore stuff from ca. 1890 > 1920 that is tonal but thankfully not Donizetti.
ReplyDeleteAs someone on Parterre Box pointed out, all the Met operas are Italian or German with one exception and there's the usual "tourist bloat" of 17 Butterfly's etc. There was someone who said "Well, the Paris Opera has x number of those warhorses too". Sure, but they also have new productions of Moses und Aron and Lear, not the same thing.
Hard to decide whether the Met, LA Opera or SFO has the more boring season. :-)
Who do you have in mind in that 1890-1920 period? Shrecker, Zemlinsky, etc? Mascagni's later work? Resphighi, stretching things? D'Indy, Dukas, etc?
ReplyDeleteOh, wait, sorry - I got confused by my inbox and thought this was Mary Jane again. I know your taste. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing The Nose, I've been looking forward to Lulu (which I would have even if Kentridge wasn't directing).
ReplyDeleteHowever, how can you expect people to want to hear contemporary opera if it's offered on a hit or miss basis. Even if it's just one token opera every season, people will form the habit of going to it. But, these gaps work against building up a new audience.
I agree completely. It is the general problem of contemporary music, and contemporary music has been especially poorly treated at the Met, which rarely commissions new work and rarely performs new operas from elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteRespighi stretching things
ReplyDeleteHe was a terrific opera composer. One of the best things I've been to in the last 10 years was his Marie Victoire in Berlin, it was written in 1913 but unperformed until 2004. I also love La campana sommersa, La Fiamma and Balfagor. Any of those should be performed instead of the 9 millionth La Boheme.
Ariane et Barbe-bleue is also a great opera and very stage-worthy (I saw it at Opera North in the 90's), again much more interesting than the 9 millionth etc. etc.
How about Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombot or Hindemith's Cardillac (original version) or Mathis der Maler or Die Bakchantinnen or Alkestis (latter with a Hofmannsthal libretto) or ..... or......
Hell, if they *must* do Puccini, how about doing Edgar once in a while?
I'm with you until Edgar, which I have never heard.
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