He-Dropped a Lulu, It Was His Baby

James Levine pulls out, we don't mean maybe.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

She's dangerous: Marliss Peterson's Lulu has claimed her first victim.
Photo by Kristian Schuller © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Lulu, the Alban Berg tale of a femme fatale who leaves a trail of bodies in her wake has claimed its first victim: music director James Levine.

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.

Opera Review: Pick a Winner

The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul Pelkonen
"This is the story of a man who lost his nose.
It ran away, grew to human size, and eventually came back to him."

Sketch for The Nose by William Kentridge
© 2010 The Metropolitan Opera/William Kentridge

An unlikely idea for an opera, Nikolai Gogol's story is one of the great comic works of Russian literature. Shostakovich set the work when he was 22, and it was quickly banned in Russia for 44 years. The Nose finally arrived at the Met this season, in a brilliant new production by William Kentridge.