Metropolitan Opera Attacks Opera News

Met Guild publication to cease reviews of Met productions.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

(Ed. Note: This story has since been updated, with the Metropolitan Opera issuing a press release stating that Opera News will continue to review its performances. Read more about it here.)

Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb has struck again, this time close to his own opera house.

According to a report by Daniel J. Wakin in the New York Times, Opera News, the 76-year old publication of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, announced today that they will no longer be reviewing Metropolitan Opera productions. The decision comes following the Met's "dissatisfaction" with the magazine's reviews of recent Met shows, most notably its controversial, expensive production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

City Opera Occupies Financial District

Opera company moves into new office over a cigar store.
(No, really.)

The ITT Building at 75 Broad Street,
new home of New York City Opera.

Like a rebellious teenager threatening to move out of the house, the  troubled New York City Opera has finally made good on its threat and left Lincoln Center altogether.

The opera company, which announced earlier this year that it would not be performing in its longtime home at the former New York State Theater, had maintained offices in the building for the last eight months. Their new digs are at 75 Broad Street, located in the heart of the financial district. An advertised rent for office space in the building listed it at $33 per square foot. 

Built in 1928 as the ITT building, this 33-story office block sits on the corner of Broad and South William Street, two blocks from the New York Stock Exchange. It is nowhere near any theaters, opera houses, concert halls, or anywhere else that could be used for the performance of opera. Perhaps the company will perform in the nine-seat cigar lounge of tobacconists Barclay Rex, who have a store in the building.

In other news, City Opera's labor impasse with two unions (Musicians' Local 802 and the American Guild of Musical Artists) continues. Negotiations ended last week when the opera company declared an impasse. NYCO general manager George Steel has asked for a federal mediator to step in and jump-start a new session of negotiations. With the new offices only two blocks from the heavily guarded New York Stock Exchange, Mr. Steel may have chosen 75 Broad with the idea of using the New York Police Department as strike-breakers. Or maybe he just likes to walk to work.

Before that happens, the mediator's task will be to persuade the musicians that a contract stripped of health benefits and offering only ten percent of their former salaries is some kind of upgrade over making money to perform opera. In November, the company rejected offers from both the chorus and  orchestra to play for free in exchange for keeping their health benefits.

City Opera has until February to get their musicians in line (or hire scabs.) The company's truncated season is scheduled to open at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with productions of Verdi's La Traviata and Prima Donna, the new French-language opera by singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright.

The most disturbing rumor about City Opera comes from the blog VoiceTalk, written by singer Daniel James Shigo. Mr. Shigo published a story on Dec. 5 alleging that the opera company is planning to discard its archives. These include rare programs and photographs of the many stars who graced its stage in a history lasting more than half a century. Sad, but typical of the recent history under Mr. Steel's management.

Angela Gheorghiu vs. Maria Callas

Technology pits Romanian soprano against La Divina.

"Devo veramente a cantare con lei?"
Maria Callas in Cherubini's Medea.
Photo © EMI Classics/La Scala archive.

Like the late diva Emilia Marty, soprano Angela Gheorghiu has made a bid for immortality with her forthcoming CD release: Homage to Maria Callas.

The disc features the Romanian soprano singing some of Callas' favorite repertory in the verismo genre, including arias from Puccini's La bohème, Catalani's La Wally and "La Mamma Morta", the aria from Giordano's Andrea Chenier made famous in the movie Philadelphia.

But the most controversial addition to the disc is a digitally built duet between La Gheorghiu and the late Maria Callas. The two sopranos, one living, one very dead, will sing "L'amour c'est l'oiseaux rebelle", the Habañera from Act I of Bizet's Carmen.

According to a press release (received today from EMI Classics) the new "duet" was created from the original master tape of Callas' 1961 recording of the aria. The engineers chose this over the '63 recording of the complete opera, because it lacked the usual choral accompaniment.

In the engineering booth, the original orchestra (the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française under the baton of George Prêtre) was scrubbed out. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Marco Armiliato re-recorded the music, with the players using a special click track to match the original. Ms. Gheorghiu also chose to learn Callas' particular sense of rhythm and meter, enabling the two divas to warble together, or seperately.


Leaving aside obvious reservations (the biggest one being that the Habañera is intended for one singer!) the new disc will hit New York's few remaining record shops in October, shortly before Ms. Gheorghiu's scheduled appearance with the Opera Orchestra of New York. In the OONY performance, she will sing the title role in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvrer.

Ms. Gheorghiu has a history of recent cancellations and controversies at the Metropolitan Opera. In an interview this weekend with the Los Angeles Times, conductor Leonard Slatkin blamed the diva for his exit from a disastrous 2009 revival of Verdi's La Traviata.

Earlier this year, the singer dropped out of the company's new production of Faust. Scheduled to sing Marguerite opposite Jonas Kaufmann, Ms. Gheorghiu cited "creative differences" with the new production, which updates the German legend to the 20th centiry and makes Faust into Robert Oppenheimer. Perhaps she will use her free time to prepare another tribute, this time to Catalan soprano Victoria de los Ángeles.