Opera Review: An Old-Fashioned Wedding

Juilliard Opera stages Le Nozze di Figaro.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Shenanigans: The Count (Takaoki Onishi, center) confronts Susanna (Ying Fang, right)
as Cherubino (Virginie Verrez) looks on. Photo by Ken Howard © 2015 The Juilliard School.

On Friday night, Juilliard Opera opened its last production of the spring season, a Stephen Wadsworth staging of Le Nozze di Figaro with a stellar young cast and a staging approach that was refreshingly true to the opera's text. This is the third (and final) Mozart/Da Ponte opera to be mounted by Mr. Wadsworth at Juilliard on the stage of the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. With designer Charlie Corcoran, he continues to rely on simple multi-proscenium sets, period costumes, lots of stage action, and young singing actors thoroughly steeped in performance tradition.

Opera Review: A Snake in the (fake) Grass

Juilliard and the Met collaborate on Cosí fan tutte.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Fiordiligi (Emalie Savoy) attempts to elude Ferrando (Matthew Lewis) in Juilliard's Così fan tutte.
Photo by Nan Melville © 2012 The Juilliard School/The Metropolitan Opera.

Stephen Wadsworth's handsome new production of Così fan tutte, the latest collaboration between Juilliard and the Metropolitan Opera is set in a claustrophobic garden. Looming, convent-like walls trap the participants in Mozart's "school for lovers." Significantly, the doors are locked. Occasionally, Don Alfonso (Evan Hughes) the perpetrator of this experiment in spit and partner swapping peers over the walls, to check how his subjects are getting along.

This production (seen at the Nov. 17 matinee at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater) is a sequel (of sorts) to Mr. Wadsworth's Juilliard Don Giovanni, seen at the conservatory last Sprig. Charlie Corcoran has again mounted the comic action in a series of handsome, receding picture frames that provide entrances and exits. Nature-images abound, from the (working) water pump, the grassy (AstroTurf) carpet, and the large orange tree that dominates the scene.

Given the plot of Così, the last collaboration between Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, one expects a serpent to slither out and bite the dunder-headed protagonists, two young soldiers who swap their partners, (a pair of sisters) to prove their fidelity and win a bar bet. The cynicism of the libretto and question-mark ending can sometimes leave an audience feeling downright queasy, despite the glittering music.

"Ghost" Busting

New Director May Pull Valhalla Out of the Fire

Kaboom! Director Michael Bay and his ideas for Götterdämmerung. 

We're about two months away from the opening of the Metropolitan Opera season, and three months away from the premiere of Siegfried, the third part of the company's new Ring cycle designed and directed by Robert Lepage.

Or is it?

According to an item on parterre box, the Canadian director is considering bringing in a "ghost director" to work on Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, the last two operas in the massive mythological cycle. No information was given on who this might be--whether it's an assistant director from the house or another big-name professional.

Mr. Lepage's Ring has met with mixed reviews for the first two installments. Das Rheingold was stagey and beset with blocking problems, including a conspicuous pair of non-threatening Giants.


Die Walküre went off smoothly, despite an Act I set that looked shipped in from IKEA and the bizarre decision to have a double play Brunnhilde as she slept on top of her mountain. Speculation: this arrangement could have been made to ensure extra rehearsals for Deborah Voigt's summer run of Annie Get Your Gun at the Glimmerglass Festival.

Since we here at Superconductor have no information beyond the parterre snippet, the time has come to engage in rabid speculation as to who this "ghost director" might be. Here's five candidates:

Herbert von Karajan: Sure, he's dead. But the former Austrian conductor would probably like finish his incomplete cycle at the opera house from the 1970s. Could the spirit of von Karajan descend from the heavens above Austria and lead an inspired Götterdämmerung? Barring that, could he direct?


Julie Taymor: The trials and tribulations of the U2-written musical Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark were one reason the Met's technological issues with the Ring didn't hold the headlines. Ms. Taymor might return to the scene of her triumphant Die Zauberflöte. Her dragon is better-looking anyway.

Otto Schenk: The people's choice! Herr Schenk directed the company's wildly successful staging of the Ring that held the boards at the Met for 20 years. I'm sure that there's a container somewhere in New Jersey that still has the old sets, and that they can be whipped back into shape for the complete cycles planned for next Spring. But that would make too much sense.

Stephen Wadsworth: He's directed the Ring in Seattle. Last year, he took just six weeks to stage the Met's new Boris Godunov after German director Peter Stein cancelled in mid-July. The most likely candidate on this list.

Michael Bay: The Hollywood filmmaker understands the manufacture of "entertainment" where huge, clanking machinery takes higher priority than the safety of performers, and heart-warming drama is replaced by soulless technology and ginned-up computer-generated special effects. The man who gave us Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon is the guy they should have hired in the first place.