Festival Preview: The Met Live in HD Summer Festival 2018

The Met Live in HD festival Marx the spot with ten operas and a classic screwball comedy.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

That ain't peanuts: Groucho is open for business in a scene from A Night at the Opera
© 1935 Universal Pictures.

As a celebration of opera (and an opportunity for marketing the Metropolitan Opera to the city at large) you can't beat the Met's Live in HD Film Festival. This eleven-evening free event has become a hallmark of the Peter Gelb era at the Met. It allows the revisiting of old favorites or the experience, for the bold opera novice, of something entierey new.

The Verdi Project: Il Trovatore

Sometimes too much popularity can be a bad thing.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Metropolitan Opera does the Anvil Chorus in the David Macvicar production of Il Trovatore.
Image © 2017 The Metropolitan Opera.

There is no opera that needs defending more than Il Trovatore. Verdi's eighteenth opera burst upon thestage at the Teatro Apollo in Rome like a cannon shot in 1853. It was the second of the operas still referred to as Big Three, following Rigoletto and preceding La Traviata and it quickly earned a place as one of his most popular and reliable stage works. It has some of Verdi's best tunes. It was brilliant, terrifying and original. It played everywhere.

And then came the Marx Brothers.