Opera Review: Disenchantment

The Met revives its fairy tale twin bill of Tchaikovsky and Bartók.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Two sides of marriage. Left, Matthew Polenzani and Sonya Yoncheva in Iolanta. Right, Angela Denoke and Gerald
Finley as Mr. and Mrs. Bluebeard. Photos by Marty Sohl © 2019 The Metropolitan Opera. Collage by the author.

Part of the problem with short one-act operas is figuring out how to pair them off. On Monday night, the Met offered its second performance this season of a very unconventional double bill: Tchaikovsky's fairy tale Iolanta and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. The first is an idealized boy-meets-girl story, originally written to be paired with The Nutcracker. The second is Bartók's only opera: a chilling portrait of married life gone very wrong. The production, which premiered in Warsaw, is the brain-child of director Mariusz Trelinski, and this performance marks its first revival since 2015.

DVD Review: Miracles Out of Nowhere

The Royal Opera of Covent Garden mounts Parsifal.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The wounded and the penitent: Gerald Finely as Amfortas and Angela Denoke as
Kundry in a scene from Act II of Parsifal at Covent Garden.
Photo by Clive Barda © 2013 Royal Opera House of Covent Garden

Parsifal is the final completed stage work of Richard Wagner. For better or for worse, it is also the work that  lends itself most easily to radical interpretation. This latest DVD issue of the opera (released earlier this year on OpusArte) comes from the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden, and shows director Stephen Langridge's vision of the opera. He puts a secular spin on this story, re-imagining the Grail legend as a story of innocence lost and miracles achieved, although not always in a way that one would expect.