Superconductor previews the coming season at the big house.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
The Metropolitan Opera released its schedule on Feb. 15, 2016, with a curious lack of fanfare. Now that your friendly correspondent is back from Japan and no longer jet-lagged, it's time to look at the slate of operas on offer for next year.
This schedule is a dull offering from an opera company in an ever-increasing sense of crisis under general manager Peter Gelb. There are only five new productions (one of them a U.S. premiere) and just eighteen operas in the generale (I'm sorry, but staging the same Julie Taymor productions of Die Zauberflöte and (a shortened English-language) The Magic Flute do not count as separate operas! For that matter, neither do the pair of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci which will be played as per usual on the same evening.)
by Paul J. Pelkonen
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| This is why we can't have nice things: a scene from the cancelled Calixto Bielto La Forza del Destino, staged last summer at the London Coliseum,. Photo by Robert Workman for the English National Opera. |
The Metropolitan Opera released its schedule on Feb. 15, 2016, with a curious lack of fanfare. Now that your friendly correspondent is back from Japan and no longer jet-lagged, it's time to look at the slate of operas on offer for next year.
This schedule is a dull offering from an opera company in an ever-increasing sense of crisis under general manager Peter Gelb. There are only five new productions (one of them a U.S. premiere) and just eighteen operas in the generale (I'm sorry, but staging the same Julie Taymor productions of Die Zauberflöte and (a shortened English-language) The Magic Flute do not count as separate operas! For that matter, neither do the pair of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci which will be played as per usual on the same evening.)
