Season Preview: It's a Bellwether Season!

The New York Philharmonic turns 175.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

No there really aren't giant bells hanging from the concert ceiling of David Geffen Hall.
That's photo alteration by the author.

Ring out the bells, real or imaginary: this is an important year for the New York Philharmonic. America's oldest orchestra celebrates 175 years of making music this year, even as it looks ahead to the coming renovations of David Geffen Hall and the end of an era as Alan Gilbert prepares to step down as music director.. The season opens tonight, so here's an overview of this exciting year to come.

Season Preview: The Angels Take Manhattan

New York City Opera completes comeback with 2016-17 slate.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ava Pine in a scene from the Fort Worth Opera production 

of  Angels in America.  

Before it went bankrupt, the New York City Opera would lead off each opera season with a new production. With the announcement of its five opera slate for 2016-17 on May 24, the City Opera has resumed its place at the top of next season’s proverbial batting order. This is a bold and exciting schedule with five brand-new opera productions.



This has been a rough decade for New York’s second biggest opera company, which declared bankruptcy in 2013, aborting its season and closing its doors after deciding to leave Lincoln Center three years before. The new City Opera had its maiden voyage this winter. On May 24 general manager Michael Capasso unveiled the plans for 2016-17.

City Opera will use a “split” schedule, with operas in the fall, winter and spring. The first offering is a bold double bill of one-act operas, pairing the New York stage premiere of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s first opera Aleko with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Like its better-known counterpart, Aleko is a story of betrayal, jealousy and bloody revenge, but without the greasepaint. It opens Sept. 8.

The Iraq War is the subject of Fallujah by Tobin Stokes, which arrives in New York in November. This 90-minute one-act chamber opera premiered at the Long Beach Opera in March of this year to good reviews. Fallujah will open Nov. 17.  The performance location is still to be announced.

In January, the opera company revisits its strong historic connection with direcor and choreographer Hal Prince. Mr. Prince will mount a new production of Leonard Bernstein’s opera Candide. The famous satire by French poet Voltaire springs to life once more, re-tellmg the story of a naïve bumpkin and his adventures through a dark and cynical world in pursuit of happiness.

The composer Ottoriono Respighi is known more for his tone poems depicting ancient Rome than for his operas. City Opera will attempt to change that perception with the New York premiere of La Campena Sommersa (”The Sunken Bell”) a fairy tale opera from 1927. This production bows at the Rose Theater on March 31, 2017.

In May the company will continue it's out reach to New York's Latino community with Los Elimentos by Spanish court composer Antonio Di Letres. This baroque opera written in am Italian style offers a musical analogy ofthe four classical elements of earth, air, fire and water. It will be produced at Harlem Stage in May of 2017.

The season ends with one of next years most exciting events: the New York premiere of an operatic adaptation of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. The opera, by Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös, reduces the running time of the seven hour play to a manageable 3 1/2 hours without sacrificing the original dramatic genius of Mr. Kushner's work. Angels in America opens June 10, 2017 at the Rose Theater.

Splitting the Apple: The Metropolitan Opera Announces its 2016-17 Season

A heap more variety for next season, and a freeze in ticket prices.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Christian van Horn as Gessler in a scene from Pierre Audi's production of Guillaume Tell.
Photo © 2013 Netherlands Opera.

Today at noon, the Metropolitan Opera announced an ambitious schedule of operas for 2016-17, with six new productions and twenty revivals, including a slew of productions that have been largely ignored in the past decade. And in a refreshing change, there's no operetta on the schedule, with the company's Jeremy Sams-ified versions of The Merry Widow and Die Fledermaus given merciful (and hopefully permanent) rest. This season will mark 50 years since the Met pulled up stakes for Lincoln Center, a fact that is being celebrated with a big opera gala in the spring of 2017. There's a lot in this press release, so let's get to it, starting with the six new productions planned for next year.

Season Preview: New World, Old School

The New York Philharmonic unveils 2016-17.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

On the mic: Music director Alan Gilbert (left) and Philharmonic president Matthew Van Besien
announcing the coming 2016-17 season at the Rubinstein Atrium. Photo by the author.

The coming season represents two milestones in the illustrious history of the New York Philharmonic. It is the ensemble's 175th season, and as such has a reassuring focus on traditional favorites like Dvorak and Tchaikovsky. And it's also the last season for current music director Alan Gilbert, whose tenure has been marked by an interest in programming new music and an attempt to make America's oldest orchestra reach a contemporary audience.

Season Preview: The Prodigy Returns

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center focuses 2016-17 on Mendelssohn.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Two sides of Felix Mendelssohn: as child prodigy and man.
His music is at the center of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's
programming for the 2016-17 season. 

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has announced its schedule for 2016-17, an ambitious slate focused on the life and artistry of one of the most important but under appreciated composers of the 19th century: Felix Mendelssohn. A pianist at the age of six, Mendelssohn became one of the most noted composers in Europe with his incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, published when its creator was just 19.

Carnegie Hall 2016-17 Preview: Masks, Marathons, and Marvels

Ambitious 2016-17 season offers Mahler, Bruckner and a Venetian festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Venetian festival La Serenissima comes to Carnegie Hall in February 2017.
Original image courtesy of  and © 2016 by Carnegie Hall. Photo alteration by the author.

For the last three years, Carnegie Hall's annual press conference unveiling the slate of its forthcoming season has been held upstairs at the no-longer-new Resnick Education Wing, atop the world-famous music hall at the corner of West 57th St. and Seventh Avenue. Today's conference featured a lengthy presentation by still-reigning Executive and Artistic Director Clive Gillinson, a conversation between Mr. Gillinson and next year's composer-in-residence Steve Reich, and the distribution of weighty vermilion folders to members of the working music press. From the looks of the schedule, next year is going to be...big.
Make that...really, really big.