L'Amour de Loin at the Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
Last night, the Metropolitan Opera played its last 2016 performance of Kaija Saariaho's opera L'Amour de Loin. This the first opera by a female composer mounted at the Met since 1903, and it served as a kind of manifesto for this company's mission in this uncertain new century.L'Amour de Loin (the title means "Love From Afar") is Ms. Saariaho's first opera, and it premiered at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris in 2000. This production featured Susanna Philips and Eric Owens, American stars who have risen to prominence in the last decade, as well as the stage direction of Robert Lepage, an artist whose successes at the Met are still overshadowed by the colossal failure of his staging of Wagner's Ring.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
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| Susanna Philips (top) Tamara Mumford (left) and Eric Owens in L'Amour de Loin. Photo by Ken Howard © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera. |
