Metropolitan Opera Alters Rush Ticket Policy

Or...why Superconductor will probably not be covering the Met anymore.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

New changes in the Metropolitan Opera 2014-15 Rush Ticket Policy make reviewing
performances in the coming season all but impossible.

The Metropolitan Opera announced today that its Rush Tickets program is being drastically altered for the 2014-15 season. The revised ticket program designed (according to the press release) to allow "expanded, more democratic access to Met tickets for $25" means that Superconductor will most likely not

be covering or reviewing most Metropolitan Opera performances in the 2014-15 season.

Concert Review: Reunited With Minimal Fuss

Steve Reich and Philip Glass open BAM NextWave--together.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Across the great divide: the composers Philip Glass (left) and Steve Reich.
Photo courtesy Nonesuch Records.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Philip Glass and Steve Reich were friends and sometimes collaborators. A rift between the two men resulted in each becoming a separate driving force behind minimalism, a compositional style that favored small melodic cells, expanded, repeated and grown into huge crystalline structures that beguiled the ear and soothed the mind. Both men are now 77, and have ended their forty-year feud. On Tuesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music,  the composers took the stage together for the first time in decades.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Hansel and Gretel

The Metropolitan Opera revives a nightmare before Christmas.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Appetizer for destruction: Robert Brubaker returns as the Witch in the Met's
revival of Hansel and Gretel. Photo by Marty Sohl © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.

When I was growing up, the Met's production of Hansel and Gretel (by Otto Schenk) was something to see, with a gorgeous gingerbread house, imaginative animal costumes, and a dream ballet featuring realistic-looking angels that brought tears to the eyes of the most jaded adult. For decades, Engelbert Humperdinck's fairy-tale opera stood as a stalwart family favorite at the Metropolitan Opera House, as traditional as the massive tree that adorns the Grand Tier promenade in December.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: La traviata

The little red dress returns. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A boy, a girl and a timepiece. Marina Poplavskaya (right) in La Traviata.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera.

This stripped-down Willy Decker staging of La Traviata (introduced at the very end of 2010)
eliminates the elegance of 19th century Paris for a bare, clinical room, a single curved bench and a giant clock that ticks down the remaining minutes in the life of Violetta, the courtesan who is at the heart of Verdi's most intimate tragedy.