Metropolitan Opera Preview: The Magic Flute

The Met brings back its sturdy Flute for another toot. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bald soprano: Kathryn Lewek tears up as the Queen of the Night
in The Magic Flute. Image © 2018 The Metropolitan Opera. 

Q: When does something become a "holiday tradition?"
A: When it's insistently and repetitively done every damn year.

In an unusual schedule repetition, the Met brings back its "family-friendly" (that's shortened, abridged and translated into English) holiday presentation of Mozart's The Magic Flute in its always impressive presentation by Julie Taymor. (It was slotted in last year to cover the cancellation of a planned La Forza del Destino.) Anyway, it's back.

Festival Preview: The Met Live in HD Summer Festival 2018

The Met Live in HD festival Marx the spot with ten operas and a classic screwball comedy.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

That ain't peanuts: Groucho is open for business in a scene from A Night at the Opera
© 1935 Universal Pictures.

As a celebration of opera (and an opportunity for marketing the Metropolitan Opera to the city at large) you can't beat the Met's Live in HD Film Festival. This eleven-evening free event has become a hallmark of the Peter Gelb era at the Met. It allows the revisiting of old favorites or the experience, for the bold opera novice, of something entierey new.

Operation: Maestro Drop

Superconductor looks back at the Met's 2017-2018 season.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Met went through an ugly transition of power this year. Photoshop by the author.

It is impossible to write about the 2017-2018 Metropolitan Opera season without addressing the elephant in the room: the ugly transition of power between James Levine and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Mr. Levine, who had accepted the post of Music Director Emeritus a few years ago, was unceremoniously fired from the opera company that he had served for over forty years in March of this year.

Comment: The Wound that Will Not Heal

Good Friday morning, Wagner's Parsifal and James Levine.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Placido Domingo and Jessye Norman as Parsifal and Kundry
in the old Met production of Wagner's Parsifal.
Photo detail from the album cover of the
1994 Deutsche Grammophon Parsifal © 1994 DG/UMG and the Metropolitan Opera.

I have a "ritual" I like to do on Good Friday morning. I like to be completely alone and have a long, meditative listen to Wagner's Parsifal. The composer's final opera concerns itself with matters of spirituality and redemption, of the idea of unimagineable, infinite suffering that is only alleviated with the arrival of a savior figure.

The Met Al Fresco: Summer Live in HD Festival

A look ahead at next month's Peter Gelb film festival in Lincoln Center Plaza.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Eric Owens in L'Amour de Loin.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2016 the Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera returns to its tradition of showing reruns to an adoring public at Lincoln Center plaza in the late summer. This year the company offers screenings of eight operas plus filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's version of The Magic Flute. Why only eight operas, you ask? Because one of them, Wagner's four hour epic Tristan und Isolde is being split into two nights.

All the screenings will be held on Lincoln Center Plaza, with the 3,000 FREE seats filled on a first-come first-serve basis. Programs and playbills will be provided.

The Contender from Philadelphia

Yannick Nézet-Séguin hire is the best thing about the Met season.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Gloves off: Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the new "creed" at the Met.
Photo alteration by the author.

The Metropolitan Opera bounced back this year, delivering an artistically satisfying season that nonetheless failed to set the box office on fire. The biggest news though is the long-awaited end of the James Levine era, as conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been tapped as the company's new music director. Mr. Nézet-Séguin's term does not start until the end of this decade but he brings something new to this massive opera operation: hope.

Here's the wrap-up of the season, in which your not-so-humble critic saw twenty performances of twenty different operas. Superconductor, which relies on the generosity of press tickets from arts organizations in order to operate, still does not receive them from the Metropolitan Opera. Hopefully that will change.

Go to Jail. Do Not Pass 'Go.'

The Met may send Anna Netrebko to the gulag.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Concept art for the Metropolitan Opera's From the House of the Dead,
Anna Netrebko. Photo by Marty Sohl.

The Metropolitan Opera has been offering glimpses of its future in the New York Times this week. In an interview with Michael Cooper, incoming music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin promised that new productions of Aida and Salome would open future seasons, each starring Anna Netrebko. Superconductor has learned that a third is on the schedule for the Russian diva: a new version of Janacek's From The House of the Dead.

The Unreliable Aristocrat

Jonas Kaufmann ditches Tosca at the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

He's moving on: Jonas Kaufmann, shown here in the Met staging of Parsifal
in 2012, will not be appearing in Tosca later this year.

It's all just a little bit of history repeating: Jonas Kaufmann will not be singing at the Met this year. The news dropped today from Michael Cooper at the New York Times.

A First Look: The Metropolitan Opera 2017-18

Superconductor previews the coming season at the big house.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This is why we can't have nice things: a scene from the cancelled Calixto Bielto La Forza del Destino, 
staged last summer at the London Coliseum,. Photo by Robert Workman for the English National Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera released its schedule on Feb. 15, 2016, with a curious lack of fanfare. Now that your friendly correspondent is back from Japan and no longer jet-lagged, it's time to look at the slate of operas on offer for next year.

This schedule is a dull offering from an opera company in an ever-increasing sense of crisis under general manager Peter Gelb. There are only five new productions (one of them a U.S. premiere) and just eighteen operas in the generale (I'm sorry, but staging the same Julie Taymor productions of Die Zauberflöte and (a shortened English-language) The Magic Flute do not count as separate operas! For that matter, neither do the pair of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci which will be played as per usual on the same evening.)

Summer Festival Preview 2016: The MET Live in HD Screenings

Because watching movies of opera productions on a screen for free couldn't possibly diminish the opening of the actual opera season a month later....
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Mozart (Tom Hulce) celebrates a field goal in this scene from the
award-winning Milos Forman film Amadeus. Image © 1984 The Saul Zaentz Company/Orion Pictures.

This August, the Metropolitan Opera will fill Lincoln Center 's outdoor space with seats and turn Josie Robertson Plaza into a venue for repeats of the company's  omnipresent Live in HD series. This is an enjoyable summer festival event, free to all and stunning passers-by and curious tourists. Here's the slate for this year's festival which opens not with an opera but with an Academy Award-winning movie. And yes, we tell you which operas to catch and which ones to skip...or at least bring a good bottle of wine.

The Wheels Off the Bus Go Thump! Thump! Thump!

Superconductor breaks down the 2015-16 season at the Metropolitan Opera.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Politics behind the gold curtain at the Metropolitan Opera in a reworked 1990s movie poster.
Photos of James Levine and Peter Gelb © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

This was the year the wheels came off the bus at the Metropolitan Opera. Not just for the uneasy alliance between music director James Levine and general manager Peter Gelb, but for Superconductor, which only saw nine performances at the big house this season.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Le Nozze di Figaro

Mozart's comedy of sex and class struggle returns to the Met stage.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Isabel Leonard (center) stars as Cherubino in the Met's revival of Le Nozze di Figaro.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2014 The Metropolitan Opera.

Look, this is just a good opera. In fact it's one of the best. Mozart's Figaro is a four-act, four-hour feast of the composer's best and most memorable tunes, and a story that features one memorable day in a very peculiar household. This run offers a new cast in the Met's production by Sir Richard Eyre, which opened the 2014 season.

Baton, Baton, Who's Got the Baton?

Exploring podium possibilities at The Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul J.  Pelkonen

Call it a comeback: James Levine's return to the Met podium in 2013.
Photo by Jonathan Tichler, © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

A pair of stories published by the Arts section of the New York Times earlier this month have offered some much-needed insight into the conducting situation at the Metropolitan Opera. The articles, by Michael Cooper and Zachary Woolfe, also fueled Internet speculation as to the artistic future of that great institution, which will announce the 2016-17 season later this month.

Opera Review: Heart of Glass

The Met opens with Bartlett Sher's new Otello.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The ocular proof: Iago (Željko Lučić, left) reminds Otello (Aleksandrs Antonenko)
why Verdi considered naming this opera Jago.

The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Verdi's Otello, which opened the company's 2015 season last night in a special gala performance, contains a preponderance of good directorial ideas, supporting a strong cast in this adaptation of Shakespeare's drama. This performance was broadcast live in Times Square on that crossing's giant television screens, and lost none of its power to shock and entertain despite having to compete with tourists, fire trucks, chattering desnudas and a street performer in an Elmo costume who stopped bothering said tourists long enough to watch the drama unfold.

Superconductor Preview: Met Outdoor HD Festival

The Met does its annual big show in Lincoln Center Plaza.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The annual MET Live in HD festival attracts 3000 opera lovers each night to Lincoln Center Plaza.
Photo © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera likes to do things big. And nothing is bigger than their annual ten-day series of free opera screenings, shown on an enormous digital projection screen mounted on the balcony of the Grand Tier of the Metropolitan Opera House. There are 3,100 seats for each screening and no tickets are required. This year's series starts Friday night and continues through Labor Day. Superconductor has a preview.

Season Preview: The Metropolitan Opera 2015-16

Six new productions, nineteen revivals and as usual wilderness of mirrors.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

(l.-r.) Aleksandrs Antonenko, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Aleksandrs Antonenko,
Aleksandrs Antonenko, Aleksandrs Antonenko, and Aleksandrs Antonenko
star in Otello. Photo by Kristian Schuller © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera unveiled its 2015-2016 slate at 1pm today, with a roster of operas and new productions that veers toward the conservative for America's largest opera company.

So without further ado, the Opening Night (Sept. 21, 2015) is a new production of Otello by Bart Sher. The award-winning Broadway director turns his hand from light bel canto comedies (The Barber of Seville, L'Elisir d'Amore) to the much heavier Shakespearean tragedy by way of Giuseppe Verdi. Tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko will deliver the opening "Esultate!" and Sonya Yoncheva is the hapless Desdemona. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: The Merry Widow

The Met warms up a new production of Lehár's operetta.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Renée Fleming as Hanna and Nathan Gunn as Danilo in Lehár's "The Merry Widow."
Susan Stroman's new production opens on December 31, 2014.
Photo by Brigitte Lacombe © 2014 The Metropolitan Opera.

In this new production of the evergreen Lehár operetta, Renée Fleming is Hanna Glawari, a rich and glamorous widow who becomes the object of affection for every ardent young suitor in turn-of-the-century Paris. Nathan Gunn is her ardent suitor Danilo.

For Opera Goers, the Lottery is Over

Met Opera (quietly) alters rush ticket policy (again.)
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Much to this guy's relief, the Met is getting out of the lottery business.
New York Lottery image © New York State Lottery. Photo alteration by the author.

Earlier this year, Superconductor published a column regarding the Metropolitan Opera's implementation of a new rush ticket policy for the 2014-15 season which forced would-be opera goers to enter a daily lottery on the Met website. Last night, this blog discovered that as of Nov. 20, 2015, this lottery has been discontinued in favor of an online-only, first-come, first-serve policy.

Opera Review: Sailing the Seas of Hatred

As protestors shout, the Met unveils The Death of Klinghoffer
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Klinghoffers (Alan Opie, in wheelchair, Michaela Martins, center) confront terrorists 
Rambo (Ryan Speedo Green, with rifle) and Omar (Jesse Kovarsky, in red shirt)
 aboard the Achille Lauro in Act II of The Death of Klinghoffer. 
Photo by Ken Howard © 2014 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera opened a month ago, but Monday night's company premiere of John Adams' troubling 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer was the real opening night, the  most significant event of this young season. The opera, offered in a handsome, disquieting staging by director Tom Morris in collaboration with the English National Opera is a strong argument for more stagings of modern opera by contemporary composers. This is a sharply executed and starkly beautiful production that offered genuine food for thought.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: The Death of Klinghoffer

The Met presents John Adams' controversial opera for the first time.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Leon Klinghoffer, 1916-1985.

In the lead-up to the 2014 season Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb's decision to stage John Adams' 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer has drawn controversy, outrage and (on opening night) protests in front of the opera house. Mr. Gelb responded to the controversy by cancelling both the Live in HD telecast and the NPR radio simulcast of the show, so the only way to see or hear Klinghoffer is by going to the opera house.