Opera Review: It's Off...and Running

The Metropolitan Opera re-tweaks The Nose.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Doctor (Gennady Bezzubenkov) administers to the nose-less Kovalyov in a scene from The Nose.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

This year's Metropolitan Opera season is full of unlikely gems, revivals of opera productions that combine the best aspects of the unique and unexpected. One of those is the current revival of The Nose, the first opera from the pen of Dmitri Shostakovich. This revival marked the return of the innovative, kinetic staging by William Kentridge, whose imaginative use of multi-media and the Met's enormous stage allowed this thoroughly Russian farce to play out with the force of a titanic sneeze.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: The Nose

The Shostakovich comedy is back for another run.
(For the Superconductor review of The Nose, visit this link.) by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Nose makes a run for it as the Met revives William Kentridge's 2010 production.
Image © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera.

Opera fans, rejoice: the beezer is back.

The Nose, based on a story by Nikolai Gogol is Shostakovich's first opera, a wild, absurdist comedy that recounts the story of Kovalyov, an unfortunate bureaucrat (Paulo Szot, reprising his performance from 2010) who receives an unexpected total rhinectomy from his barber one morning.