A Tale of Two Opera Houses

War Memorial Opera House

View from the Stage

Photo courtesy of the War Memorial

If you read this blog, you know that my home opera house is San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House. The WMOH opened in 1932 – yes, there's a significant birthday coming up; watch for a nice funding raising campaign* – and seats roughly 3200 people in sections called Orchestra, Box, Grand tier, Dress Circle, Balcony Circle and Balcony.

In the photo above, you can see that the orchestra is fairly deep and there's a significant overhang of the box level over the back of the orchestra. In the level above the boxes, the Grand Tier is in front, then, across an aisle, the Dress Circle rises above it.

Above that, there's the Balcony Circle, and behind it, the Balcony. 

For marketing and sales purposes, each of the levels is subdivided in various ways, to provide different price points depending on the desirability of the seats.

Metropolitan Opera House

View from the Stage

Allegedly Opening Night, 1966

The photo above is New York's Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1966. The Met seats 3800 people across six similarly named levels, but each named level gets its own separate physical tier. The Orchestra is extremely deep, with the back of Orchestra level a lot farther from the stage than the back of the WMOH orchestra level is from the stage. 

At the Met, the Parterre level houses the main box level, though, interestingly, every level up to the Balcony has boxes along the sides of the house. So, the Met levels are Parterre, Grand Tier above that, Dress Circle above that, Balcony above that, and waaaaay up there, the Family Circle. I do not have height measurements for the interior of the two houses, but the Met's Family Circle, and probably the Balcony would be above the roof of the WMOH.

Basically, any time you're in one of the tiers, even the $$$$ boxes, you're farther from the stage at the Met than at the WMOH.

I recently took in the Met's productions of Tristan und Isolde and Innocence, sitting in the Family Circle for my first Tristan and the Dress Circle for my second, in the Dress Circle for Innocence. I bought my own tickets, because, without a paid review, it was not clear when I asked for them that I would be able to get press tickets. 

Hoo boy, the sheer size of the house created quite the distance, physical and emotional, from what was happening on stage.

For Innocence, the Met used Simon Stone's production, which was created for the 2021 Aix-en-Provence world premiere, and which has been used by the commissioning opera companies. The Met was a "sponsor" of the production, and I admit, I don't know exactly what that means.

It's the production we saw in San Francisco, the one with the giant rotating set; I attended the dress rehearsal and opening night (I can't recall what I did with my subscription ticket), then watched a performance from backstage and wrote about it for SFCV. 

Everyone sang well, but I was shocked at how little impact the singing actually had. I've seen the Danish bass Stephen Milling several times and he's always been magnificent, pulling off such feats as stealing the show while singing Hagen in Götterdämmerung. But here? It could have been any good bass on stage; there was nothing like the dramatic or vocal impact Milling brings to everything he does. I was far more moved by Kristinn Sigmundsson in SF.

So, this was the last time I'll be up in the tiers at the Met; in the future, no matter the cost (if I can't get press tickets), I'll be in the orchestra somewhere, where I'll be able to actually connect with the music and singers.

More about Tristan, eventually.

 

Kavalier & Clay at the Met

 

Cover, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

I read Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay back around 2000 or 2001; my paperback copy of the book looks exactly like the graphic above, so I bought the book after it won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. I loved the book's immense sweep and its colorful characters.

I raised an eyebrow when Mason Bates and Gene Scheer's Metropolitan Opera commission was announced, because, really, it didn't seem like a great candidate for an operatic adaptation, given the scope and complexity of the novel. I was surprised that the opera wasn't listed for an HD broadcast this season, and I decided against a quick NY trip, given various writing responsibilities I have. 

Now the reviews are coming in and it seems reasonable to start a media round-up.

• Joshua Barone, NY Times
• Justin Davidson, Vulture/New York, who incorporates a critique of Peter Gelb
• Heidi Waleson, WSJ (paywall)
• Sylvia Korman, Parterre Box
• Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise (a glancing blow only)
• Alex Ross, The New Yorker (a body blow)
• George Grella, NY Classical Review
• David Gordon, TheaterMania
• Financial Times (so paywalled I have no idea who wrote it)

The Metropolitan Opera in Saudi Arabia

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The Metropolitan Opera has decided to accept $100 million from Saudi Arabia (gift link) and will perform there for three weeks annually over a five-year period.  From the NY Times story I linked to:

Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, its restrictions on free speech and its role in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, have led some in the West to call for shunning the kingdom. But in recent years both the Biden and the Trump administrations have sought closer relations with Saudi Arabia. And the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has relaxed some rules in the kingdom, tried to diversify its domestic economy beyond oil and worked to reshape its global image through large investments in business, sports, tourism and culture.

Under Mr. Gelb, the Met has been a vocal champion of political freedom and human rights in supporting Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, cutting ties with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and with artists who had supported President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, including the star soprano Anna Netrebko.

Mr. Gelb said his support for cultural exchange with Saudi Arabia was different. He called the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, which American intelligence officials said had been approved by Prince Mohammed, “a horrendous event.” But he said he had been encouraged by the new social freedoms given to Saudi women, saying that the country was “trying to improve itself in the eyes of its own population and in the eyes of the world.”

Yeah, no. This is part of a general artwashing campaign on the part of Saudi Arabia. I know about this in part because recently I started getting press releases about various Saudi artistic endeavors.

The story I linked to doesn't even mention that the 9/11 attackers were largely Saudi and the plot was masterminded by a Saudi. It doesn't mention that the Saudis have bribed the Trump family through a gigantic amount of money that Jared Kushner is managing.

Related: read this Guardian story about comedians performing in Saudi Arabia.

It really sucks that the Met has fallen on bad financial times. Maybe Gelb should figure out how to get fund-raising back on track instead of accepting money from Saudi Arabia.

 

There's Runnicles

Tannhäuser

A scene from Act 2

Photo: Evan Zimmerman / Met Opera

He's conducting the Met's Tannhäuser, which opens this week. The production is....moth-eaten, from 1977, one of the hyper-realistic (and kinda dull!) Schenk/Schneider-Siemssen productions. BUT it's an excellent cast and conductor:

Tannhäuser

Music by Richard Wagner

Libretto by the composer

 

Thursday, November 30, at 7PM

Sunday, December 3, at 2PM

Wednesday, December 6, at 7PM

Saturday, December 9, at 7PM

Tuesday, December 12, at 7PM

Saturday, December 16, at 7PM

Tuesday, December 19, at 7PM

Saturday, December 23, at 1PM

 

Conductor		Donald Runnicles
Production		Otto Schenk
Set Designer		Günther Schneider-Siemssen
Costume Designer		Patricia Zipprodt
Lighting Designer		Gil Wechsler
Choreographer		Norbert Vesak
Elisabeth		Elza van den Heever
Venus		Ekaterina Gubanova
Tannhäuser		Andreas Schager
Wolfram		Christian Gerhaher*
Landgraf Hermann		Georg Zeppenfeld

 

Donald Palumbo Retiring From the Met

 From the Met; needless to say, this is a plum job that has had great conductors, including Palumbo and David Stivender.

Met Chorus Master Donald Palumbo

to step down after almost 20 years

 

 

New York, NY (September 18, 2023)— Met Chorus Master Donald Palumbo announced his decision to step down from the full-time role that he has held for the past 17 years at the end of the 2023–24 season in June. Widely regarded as opera’s leading chorus master, Maestro Palumbo elevated the Met Chorus to new heights during his tenure and was responsible for the chorus’s preparation and performance in nearly 25 productions each season. In 2021, the Met Chorus was awarded Best Chorus in the World at the International Opera Awards.

 

In future seasons, Palumbo will continue to work with the Met on select operas while pursuing his other interests as a teacher at the Juilliard School and Santa Fe Opera, and on other special projects. A search for a new full-time Met chorus master will take place over the coming season.

 

“I must express my admiration and thanks to everyone I have worked with at the Metropolitan Opera over the past 17 years. The administrative and musical staff, the singers, the Met Orchestra under its brilliant Music Director Yannick, and the crew of this theater are without equal. I thank Peter Gelb for his unwavering support,” said Palumbo. “The Met Chorus has provided the greatest joy for me as they tirelessly rehearsed and performed to achieve the acclaim they so justly deserve. I look forward to continuing to work with the next generation of singers.”

 

“When I became General Manager in 2006, one of my first artistic missions was to secure the services of Donald Palumbo as the Met’s Chorus Master since he was widely considered to be the very best,” said Peter Gelb. “His work at the Met over the past 17 years more than lived up to our expectations. Under his leadership, the Met Chorus now has no equal.”

 

“Donald Palumbo is a true legend in the opera world and in the chorus world. Having started as an opera chorus conductor myself, I have always looked to Donald as an inspiration. Our collaborations in my years as guest conductor and since becoming Music Director have been some of the greatest joys of my life,” said Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director. “Donald will forever leave his mark on the unparalleled artistry of the Metropolitan Opera. Under his leadership, the chorus has never sounded better.”

 

Donald Palumbo was born in Rochester, New York, and received a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. He launched his career at the Dallas Opera in the 1980s, serving as the assistant to Roberto Benaglio, a renowned chorus master of La Scala. He joined the Met in 2006, following a 16-year tenure as chorus master at Lyric Opera of Chicago. Palumbo was also the music director of the Chorus pro Musica of Boston and served as chorus master of the Canadian Opera Company, Dallas Opera, Banff School for the Arts Summer Opera Program, Opera Company of Boston, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. In Europe, he held the position of chorus master at the Opéra de Lyon, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and Teatro Massimo in Palermo. From 1999 to 2001, he was the chorus director of the Salzburg Festival, the first American to hold that position. Since 2014, Palumbo has been a vocal coach for the apprentices of the Santa Fe Opera and has worked with the young artists at the Glimmerglass Festival and students at the University of Toronto. In September 2016, he joined the faculty of the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts at the Juilliard School. In June 2022, he prepared the Chicago Symphony Chorus for a concert performance of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Riccardo Muti. He returned to Chicago in June 2023, joining Maestro Muti for performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.

Met Commission

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Well, this will be interesting: an opera based on the current experiences of mothers in Ukraine. It is difficult to write a persuasive opera about an event when you're chronologically still very close to that event.

It's interesting to see the Met practically crowing about their New Works Program, which has managed to get four works on stage (I think, from the information below) since its inception in 2006; that's 17 years ago. There are some other works under development, and perhaps they'll manage to get more than one work every four years on stage. 

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA COMMISSIONS
UKRAINIAN COMPOSER MAXIM KOLOMIIETS TO WRITE AN OPERA ABOUT BRAVE MOTHERS WHO RESCUED THEIR KIDNAPPED CHILDREN DURING THE WAR

 

New York, NY (September 11, 2023)—As part of its ongoing support of Ukraine, the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program announced today the commissioning of a new work by Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets and librettist George Brant. The story for the opera will be based on the true events of Ukrainian mothers who embarked on an arduous 3,000-mile journey behind enemy lines into Russia to rescue their children forcibly detained there by Russian authorities. Although the characters in the opera will be largely fictional, the story is based on true events on the ground in Ukraine and in the Hague, where Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova were accused of war crimes for the abduction of the children. Faced with these accusations, Lvova-Belova announced that the mothers would have six months to find their children and reclaim them or lose them forever as wards of the Russian state.

 

Composer Maxim Kolomiiets has built a career both as a composer and as an oboist, having written solo instrumental, chamber, and orchestral pieces. He has written two operas—Espenbaum, which has been performed in a concert version, and Night, excerpts of which were premiered in August 2020 in the Recording House of Ukrainian Radio, performed by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra—and his music has been performed at international festivals, including the MATA Festival (New York), Darmstädter Ferienkurse  (Darmstadt), New Talents (Cologne), Donaueschinge Musiktage, (Donaueschingen), Warsaw Autumn (Warsaw), and Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival (New York), among others.

 

This will mark the second Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program commission for American playwright and librettist George Brant. He has written numerous plays, including Grounded, which was developed as an opera through the program with composer Jeanine Tesori before being given a full commission by the Met. Grounded is scheduled to premiere at Washington National Opera on October 28, 2023, ahead of its Met premiere in fall 2024.

 

“We’re proud to continue to support Ukraine on the cultural front. The heroism of these Ukrainian mothers in the face of Russian atrocities is a story that should be amplified theatrically and is in the good creative hands of Maxim and George,” said Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s Maria Manetti Shrem General Manager.

 

“Lincoln Center Theater is honored to be part of this commission, and we look forward to a beautiful opera,” said André Bishop, Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theater.

 

The idea to commission a Ukrainian composer was born in a meeting last fall between Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, and Gelb during her visit to the Metropolitan Opera. Following that meeting, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture invited composers to apply and received applications from 72 Ukrainian composers. The applications were vetted by the Met’s team, led by Paul Cremo, Director of Opera Commissioning Programs.  

 

The addition of this new Kolomiiets/Brant commission is part of the Met’s ongoing commitment to enriching the repertory through programming new commissions and contemporary masterpieces. The 2023­–24 season, opening September 26 with Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, features more contemporary work than any other season in modern Met history.

For more information about the Met season and the Met/LCT New Works Program, visit metopera.org.

 

The Met/LCT New Works Program

The Met/LCT New Works Program, founded in 2006, has provided developmental resources for many composers and librettists. The program has overseen the creation of several new operas, including Two Boys, composed by Nico Muhly with a libretto by Craig Lucas; Eurydice, composed by Matthew Aucoin with a libretto by Sarah Ruhl, based on her play; and Grounded, composed by Jeanine Tesori with a libretto by George Brant, based on his play—all three produced by the Met. Intimate Apparel, composed by Ricky Ian Gordon with a libretto by Lynn Nottage, based on her play, was produced by Lincoln Center Theater. Other projects in development include new works by Joshua Schmidt and Dick Scanlan; David. T. Little and Royce Vavrek; Carlos Simon and Lynn Nottage / Ruby Aiyo Gerber; and Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery, and Joel Thompson.

 

The Met/LCT New Works Program is funded by a generous gift to the Met from the Francis Goelet Charitable Trusts, with additional support from Linda Hirshman.

 

Biographies of Composer and Librettist

Composer Maxim Kolomiiets was born in 1981 in Kyiv, Ukraine. He graduated from the National Music Academy of Ukraine as an oboist and then as a composer, and from the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln as a composer. He has built a career both as a composer and as an oboist, having written solo instrumental, chamber, and orchestral pieces. He has written two operas—Espenbaum, which has been performed in a concert version, and Night, excerpts of which were premiered in August 2020 in the Recording House of Ukrainian Radio, performed by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra—and his music has been performed at international festivals, including the MATA Festival (New York), Darmstädter Ferienkurse  (Darmstadt), New Talents (Cologne), Donaueschinge Musiktage, (Donaueschingen), Warsaw Autumn (Warsaw), and Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival (New York), among others. He is also the co-founder of the contemporary music ensemble Ensemble Nostri Temporis, the founder of the Baroque ensemble Luna Ensemble, and music curator at the Gogolfest (Kyiv). He currently lives in Germany.

 

American playwright and librettist George Brant has written numerous plays, including Grounded, which was developed into an opera through the Met/LCT New Works Program with composer Jeanine Tesori before being given a full commission by the Met. Grounded is scheduled to premiere at Washington National Opera on October 28, 2023, ahead of its Met premiere in fall 2024. Other works include Marie and Rosetta, Into the Breeches!, The Prince of Providence, Elephant’s Graveyard, The Land of Oz, Tender Age, and The Mourners’ Bench. His work has been produced internationally by such companies as the Public Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, Trinity Repertory Company, Cleveland Play House, Studio Theatre, Page 73, London’s Gate Theatre, and Traverse Theatre. His scripts have been awarded a Lucille Lortel Award, Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, Scotsman Fringe First Award, Off West End Theatre Award for Best Production, NNPN Rolling World Premiere, the Smith Prize, and the Keene Prize for Literature.

  

Museum Mondays

Brünnhilde costume and winged helmet, worn by soprano Kirsten Flagstad 

at the Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera.

Exhibit at San Francisco International Airport

on the occasion of S.F. Opera's 100th season.

Costume care of the Metropolitan Opera Archive

 

Metropolitan Opera Future Seasons

Soprano Dawn Upshaw, interviewed in San Francisco Classical Voice in advance of her Dido, Reimagined program this coming Thursday, discloses that she'll be singing in Kaija Saariaho's Innocence at the Met in 2026. Upshaw has worked with Saariaho for many years, and created the role of Clémence, Countess of Tripoli, in the composer's first opera, L'amour de loin.  That's not all that caught my eye in the article, but it's the big operatic news. 

Media Round-Up: The Hours, Metropolitan Opera

I am planning to see the HD broadcast of Kevin Puts's new opera, The Hours, which is based on a novel I've never read, a film I've never seen, and Virginia Woolfe's Mrs. Dalloway, which I have read, but not recently. I wasn't originally planning a media round-up, but hoo boy, the reviews are...interesting and more than a little dubious.

• Zachary Woolfe, NY Times ("...nearly every scene in the opera eventually gets to the same place musically and dramatically, whipped into soaring emotion. The tear-jerking gets tiring."
• Justin Davidson, New York Magazine ("Discrete personalities start to liquefy and slosh together, all those gracious lamentations merging in a stream of warm melody.")
• Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post ("The Hours" should have made an amazing opera. It didn't.) 
• Christopher Corwin, Parterre Box ("I rarely glance at my watch during an opera, but last night at the Met I did—several times—as The Hours seemed to be going on for hours and hours and…")
• Gabrielle Ferrari, NY Observer
• Alex Ross, The New Yorker ("What the opera lacks, however, is a compositional identity distinct enough to hold its own against the jumpy genius of Woolf’s prose—or, for that matter, against the indelible musical signature of Philip Glass, who scored the film.")

Related: the recently-revived Sieglinde's Diaries takes a few unwarranted potshots at Zachary Woolfe, thinking that he is "trashing" Fleming (he is not) and apparently unaware of three five other published reviews that are less-than-raves about her. The kind words for Tommasini - I mean, let me note that plenty of people consider him a milquetoast reviewer unwilling to express his opinions. You know, he moved his Levine recordings from the living room to his bedroom!

Met HD: Don Carlos

The other week, I went to the encore of the Met Opera HD broadcast of Don Carlos, which was heroically sung and acted on one of the ugliest and most awful sets that I have ever seen. San Francisco Opera has had a mediocre production of the opera for about the last quarter century, but I'll tell you, I longed for it throughout the evening. I'm now having second thoughts about visiting Chicago for Lyric Opera's bring-up in September, because they are using the same damn production.  Chicago is using an older McVicar with sets by Richard Jones, whew. (My 2016 review includes some representative photos of the SFO production, and so does my blog post.)

I have questions for David McVicar! Was he inspired by his own production of Les Troyens, which makes effective use (mostly) of a unit set? See the (not very good) photo in Janos Gereben's 2015 review.

Or maybe he was inspired by the Hall of Faces in the House of Black and White in season 5 of HBO's Game of Thrones?

Regardless, it's amazing to me that no one said to him "This is too ugly to put on our stage! Are you out of your mind???"

Conversely, his direction of the singers was mostly very good: character movement on stage made sense and their interactions were well-motivated. Best of all might have been Matthew Polenzani's Carlos, who disintegrated slowly over the course of the opera, with Etienne Dupuis's Rodrigue close behind. No doubt that Dupuis was the most magnetic person on stage; he is a tremendous singer, handsome, and a great actor. The relationship between Carlos and Rodrigue was intense, intimate, very much the driver of much of the action in the opera.*

Oh, and both sang fabulously. Back in 2009, Polenzani gave one of the most beautiful displays of tenor singing that I've ever heard, in SFO's last bring-up of The Abduction from the Seraglio. His most recent appearance, as Carmen's Don José, did not work so well, but this! My gosh, vocally Don Carlos fits him like a glove, despite the length and difficulty. He said during one of the intermission interviews that it doesn't tire him the way some roles do, and he demonstrated that through a long, long evening. Dupuis has a beautifully expressive voice and a nice trill, and did I mention that he's got that special something? I mean. If you want to see more of him, come to SF in June for our upcoming Don Giovanni, the third in Michael Kavanagh's Mozart-Da Ponte series.

There is nominally a romance in the opera, between the title character and Elisabeth de Valois, who becomes his stepmother instead of his wife about 10 minutes into the opera, after they have met and fallen in love. But the central relationships are really between Carlos and Posa, between Carlos and his father, Philippe II, and between Posa and Philippe. Also between everyone and the church. Also there's Princess Eboli, who is A) a good friend of Elisabeth 2) in love with Carlos 3) having an adulterous affair with Philippe (which you find out about 

somewhere in...uh, I think it's Act IV of this monster, which is five hours long with intermissions).

This production, like so many others, dropped the scene where Elisabeth and Eboli exchange veils. Honestly, why? That scene is critical for three reasons. It establishes their friendship, which you need to know to understand Elisabeth's hurt feelings when she discovers Eboli's betrayals; it's related to Eboli's Veil Song, and it sets up the catastrophic misunderstanding in the later garden scene.

As for the women, I like Sonya Yoncheva, though McVicar didn't give her much to do dramatically; she mostly sang very beautifully. I wondered how well Eboli suited Jamie Barton; both arias seemed slower than usual, and at least for the Veil Song, I thought it was to accommodate the speed with which she could sing the ornaments. McVicar's direction of both had odd moments. Eboli practically sneered at one point; Elisabeth swung her hips in what seemed a modern manner. Folks, these are 16th c. Spanish nobles. Treat them like that on stage.

The remaining men didn't fare as well as one might want. I didn't particularly like Eric Owens as Philippe. He was okay, not great. Ditto John Relyea's Grand Inquisitor; there was a lot of posturing and movement, but...Andrea Silvestrelli was more restrained and scarier in SF. (Okay, I admit that I will be lucky to see another Philippe in Rene Pape's class.)

Then there were McVicar decisions that I found bizarre: I mean, no auto-da-fe is complete without an acrobat made up like Heath Ledger's Joker, right? McVicar likes to throw in acrobatics where the libretto doesn't call for them, like the acrobats during "Gloire à Didon" in Les Troyens. Then there's the very end of the opera, where what usually happens is that Philippe comes to take Carlos in for...torture? questioning? and his father mysteriously appears and spirits Carlos away. That isn't what happens here, and I think I will pass on describing it other than to say, well, that's certainly an interesting fantasy.

Lastly, the orchestra sounded dandy under Patrick Furrer's leadership; YN-S was out sick.

* I note that Alex Ross, seeing the opera earlier in its run, found Polenzani wooden, and I also note that good direction can tell quite a different story in the HD broadcast from what you see live. Case in point: Karita Mattila dominated the stage in the 2016 SFO Jenufa, but the balance among the principal singers was much more even in the eventual stream of the opera in the summer of 2021, because the camera didn't focus on her. Live, well, you could not take your eyes off her.

Cast Change Announcements: Met Nozze

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Some changes in the Met's upcoming performances of Le nozze di Figaro:

Conductors Daniele Rustioni and James Gaffigan will lead this season’s performances of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, replacing Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Isabel Leonard will sing Cherubino in the January performances of Le Nozze di Figaro, replacing Anna Stéphany.

Nézet-Séguin, who is taking a brief four-week sabbatical from all conducting duties commencing at the end of December, said, “I am grateful for the collaborations that led to deeply moving and memorable fall openings at the Met, in Philadelphia, at Carnegie Hall, and in Montreal, bringing us together with audiences once again. This has been a difficult time for so many, and I have been, and remain, fully committed to providing much-needed hope and artistic inspiration as we heal from the past year-and-a-half. This short break will allow time for me to reenergize as we return in the new year. I look forward to returning to the Met in February for our new production of Verdi’s Don Carlos.”

Italian maestro Daniele Rustioni, the music director at Lyon Opera and principal conductor at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, made his Met debut conducting Aida in 2017. He has conducted at many international opera houses, including La Scala, Teatro La Fenice, Zurich Opera, and the Royal Opera Covent Garden, where he is currently leading performances of Verdi’s Macbeth. This season at the Met, Maestro Rustioni will also lead the first run of performances of the Met’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto, which opens on New Year’s Eve.

American mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard has previously sung the role of Cherubino at the Met numerous times, most recently in the 2017–18 season. Also in the 2021–22 season, she will make role debuts as the title character of Massenet’s Cinderella, in a new abridged English-language version, and as the Composer in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.

Performances are January 8, 12, 15, 20, 23, and 28; Gareth Morrell will conduct the January 28 performance.

American conductor James Gaffigan, who made his Met debut conducting Puccini’s La Bohème in 2018, is currently the Music Director of Valencia's Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia and also holds positions as Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra. He has conducted with many other companies, including Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, and Hamburg State Opera. This season he will lead the Netherlands Radio in Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, Deutsche Oper Berlin in Don Carlos, Opéra national de Paris in Manon, Valencia's Les Arts in Wozzeck, and Santa Fe Opera in Tristan und Isolde. Later this season at the Met, he will conduct Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, which opens on March 25. 

The spring run of Le Nozze di Figaro opens on April 2, 2022, with Federica Lombardi as the Countess, Aida Garifullina as Susanna, Sasha Cooke as Cherubino, Gerald Finley as the Count, and Christian Van Horn as Figaro.

Rolling My Eyes, part 285

Found in The NY Times:

On Monday, for the first time in its 138-year history and as it returned from an 18-month closure, the Metropolitan Opera presented a work by a Black composer: Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” By opening the season with this work, the Met filled a gaping hole in its repertory at a time when the performing arts are rightfully being challenged to become more diverse. 

Here are all of the operas that the Metropolitan Opera has performed that weren't written by white men:

• Der Wald, Ethel Smyth (2 performances)
• L'Amour de Loin, Kaija Saariaho (8 performances)
• The First Emperor, Tan Dun (12 performances)
• Fire Shut Up in My Bones, by Terence Blanchard (7 performances)

That's 29 performances, total, of four operas. For contrast, looking at the Met's repertory report, La Boheme has gotten a total of 1344 performances, Aida 1175, and, scrolling way down past dozens of works, La Damnation de Faust and Der Freischütz have each gotten 30.

Staging Fire Shut Up in My Bones isn't filling a gaping hole. It is going to take years to do much about those gaping holes.

Metropolitan Opera Cast Change, Verdi Requiem

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Received from the Met today:

Michelle DeYoung will be the mezzo-soprano soloist in the September 11, 2021, performance of Verdi’s Requiem, replacing Elīna Garanča, who is indisposed.   

Michelle DeYoung has sung in performances of Verdi’s Requiem with numerous major orchestras, including a concert at the Hollywood Bowl with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which celebrated the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Ms. DeYoung’s roles at the Met include Fricka in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Brangäne in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Venus in Wagner’sTannhäuser, Dido in Berlioz’s Les Troyens, as well as originating the role of Shaman in Tan Dun’s The First Emperor. 

 

A special pre-season performance, Verdi’s Requiem: The Met Remembers 9/11 commemorates the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Met Orchestra and Chorus as well as soprano Ailyn Pérez, tenor Matthew Polenzani, and bass-baritone Eric Owens. The concert is the first performance inside the Metropolitan Opera House since the March 2020 closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A live transmission of the concert will be presented by Great Performances on PBS at 8:00pm ET (check local listings), hosted by ballet star Misty Copeland. The live broadcast, a special presentation of the Met as part of The WNET Group’s Great Performances series, is being produced in association with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

 

For further information, please visit www.metopera.org.

 

Levine Coverage

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The coverage of James Levine's demise is....interesting. There are a few people trying to be "fair", meaning they are trying to be "balanced" despite Levine's alleged crimes (and everything noncriminal involved with brushing his health problems under the nearest rug). 

I realize that an obituary written by a journalist as news, running in a newspaper, is supposed to assess the whole of its subject's life, but there is such a thing as soft-pedaling and there is definitely quite a bit of that around. There is lots of room for arts-related opinion pieces that really dissect Levine's career and that work to understand how he managed to stay in one of the most powerful positions in the U.S. classical music world for decades despite the rumors that swirled around him. (And why the BSO hired him to be their music director despite the rumors and his health problems.) That's the kind of thing I'd like to see more of. 

I want to note a couple of factual items that came out after the announcement of his death:

1. Levine died of natural causes. The exact cause hasn't been released, but in addition to wondering whether he'd died as the result of injuries suffered in a fall, I also wondered whether suicide was the cause.

2. In December, 2019, he married his friend? companion? life partner? Suzanne Thompson, the oboist, with whom he lived for many years. The question marks should be read in the context of his alleged fondness for underage males.

Here's a round-of of coverage of Levine's death. Note that I have not yet read all of this, so there isn't commentary on every link yet. There will be, but not until this weekend.

• Composer, teacher, and performer Elaine Fine discusses the evolution of her thinking about musicians, in a compassionate and thoughtful way. 
• Conductor and cellist Kenneth Woods has a scorching blog post  that tells you a lot about what kind of a person that Levine was. Unusually, I suggest reading the comments, which are informative and include an extensive comment by a long-time Met orchestra member. I have elsewhere read a report to the effect that Levine would talk to singers through an intermediary, which is weird for someone whose job it is to work with singers.
• Joshua Kosman (SF Chron) tells you about what the reactions to Levine's death tell you about the people making the pronouncements.
• AZ Madonna (Boston Globe) calls for the end of genius-worship. Here is Madonna's earlier call for Peter Gelb's resignation. 
• Jeremy Eichler, Globe, obituary 
• Anthony Tommasini, NY Times: obituary
• Anthony Tommasini, NY Times: appraisal
• NY Times: timeline of Levine's career
• Boston Symphony, notice of Levine's passing. It is very short, and finishes with two sentences that tell the heart of the story: "The last period of his tenure as BSO music director was plagued by ill health, which resulted in his resignation in 2011. Subsequently, there emerged allegations of sexual improprieties which virtually ended his career as many musical institutions severed ties with him, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra."
• William R. Braun, Opera News, obituary
• Justin Davidson, vulture.com, obituary
• Tim Page, Washington Post, obituary
• Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, appraisal
• Guardian, obituary
• Tom Jacobs, SFCV, appraisal, worse than soft-pedaling. He seems to be trying to excuse Levine somehow. Note the outraged comment from composer and violist Kurt Rohde.

Levine's Reputation

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The various obituaries for the late James Levine are heaping praise on him, and honestly, you should be asking yourself how much of this is even deserved.

The over-inflation of James Levine's reputation comes from various sources. Back when he stepped down as Music Director, Anthony Tommasini praised his interest in modern music and expansion of the repertory, citing Pelleas et Melisande (1902) and Berg's operas (1922; 1937) as evidence. Come ON.

The Met continues this on their home page, where they state the following:

Celebrated for shaping the Met Orchestra and Chorus into the finest in the world, he was also responsible for considerably expanding the Met repertoire. Levine conducted the first-ever Met performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani, I Lombardi and Stiffelio, Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Moses und Aron, Berg’s Lulu, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, as well as the world premieres of John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles and John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby.

There's plenty of bullshit in that quotation. The Met Orchestra is a terrific group, for sure, the equal of the best American and European orchestras. Saying it's the "first in the world" seems to me to be stretching things, owing to the many, many superb ensembles performing today.

The Chorus is an excellent group, though maybe not as great as, say, the amazing Bayreuth Festival chorus, not to mention this key point: the Met's chorus masters train the chorus, not the music director. The current chorus master is Donald Palumbo; his immediate predecessor was Raymond Hughes; before that was the legendary David Stivender. My recollection is that Stivender should get a lot of credit for the group's excellence and I know that Palumbo is considered to be a terrific musician and chorus master.

If those are all the Met premieres that Levine conducted, I would call that pathetic for his 45-year tenure. I count fifteen (15) operas. They weren't the only Met / world premieres between 1972 and 2017 by any means, and presumably Levine gets some credit for changes to the rep. With a schedule of 20-25 operas annually, though, a conductor who was truly dedicated to expanding the repertory would have found more works new to the Met to lead. 

It's also important to remember that Levine stated publicly and has been widely quoted as saying that there just weren't enough new operas that were good enough for the Met. This is also total bullshit, to which the only proper response was "maybe you should get out a little more, Jimmy." Under Levine, the Met managed to perform its second opera composed by a woman, more than a century since the first, and managed to not perform any operas composed by Black people, although the company did manage to commission and perform Tan Dun's The First Emperor.

But the Met was late to an awful lot: the company commissioned Philip Glass's The Voyage, then waited until 2008 for Satyagraha (premiered in 1979) and 2019 for Akhnaten (premiered in 1984). They were decades behind other groups, both production originated at the ENO, and both have been extremely popular. John Adams's Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghofer had long waits, though Doctor Atomic made it to the Met stage only three years after its first performances in San Francisco.

Their Janacek record is also terrible! Except for the two 1925 performances of Jenufa, San Francisco was ahead of the Met in performing The Makropulos Case, Kat'a Kabanova, and modern performances of Jenufa. We've had The Cunning Little Vixen, but (alas) not From the House of the Dead, where the Met did perform it in 2009.

We need also to take a look at Levine's record as music director of the Boston Symphony. I did, the other day, and while his record of performing new music there was better than I thought, it was also narrowly focused. He performed works by Bolcolm, Carter, Ligeti, Wuorinen, Sessions, Harbison, Lutoslawski, Messiaen, Babbitt, Perle, Schuller, Foss, Lieberson, Dawe, Duttileux, Barber, Poulenc, Milhaud among post-war and living composers, plus a fair bit of Berg and Schoenberg.

I would have gone to most of the concerts featuring those composers, but he missed an awful lot of good composers. (You can check this yourself at the BSO's performance archive.)

Lastly, here's Peter Gelb:

“No artist in the 137-year history of the Met had as profound an impact as James Levine,” Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, said in a statement. “He raised the Met’s musical standards to new and greater heights during a tenure that spanned five decades.”

It's difficult to compare the impact and influence of artists working in very different periods, and clearly Gelb means "on the Met", but I must note that the Met's chief conductors included Arturo Toscanini, who had a profound impact on orchestral quality and was a champion of new music in the 19th and early 20th centuries, however seemingly conservative he became as he aged. And you can currently find plenty of criticism of Levine's actual conducting, from interpretive blandness to technical deterioration starting in the 1990s, to the point that for at least part of this century, the orchestra was following the concertmaster rather than Levine. Why would a big institution like the Met keep a music director who was losing the ability to conduct? (Toscanini retired from the NBC Symphony after one memory lapse that we know of.) Well, that's an interesting question, now, isn't it.