Opera Review: A Close Shave

Rossini's Barbiere cuts it up in Kanazawa.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This store is in Minnesota but Rossini's Barbiere was open for business in Kanazawa, Japan last month.

Gioachino Rossini’s ‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia’ remains one of the most popular operas in the western canon, with a two hundred year performing tradition. On Sunday, February 20, that tradition came to the west coast of Japan, as the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa offered a semi staged, concert version of the Italian masterpiece, under the baton of Marc Minkowski. The performance, in the OEK's gorgeous, modern mid-sized concert hall, featured columnar LED titles (in Japanese) on either side of the acting area.

Concert Review: A Certain Sense of Drama

Andris Nelsons and the BSO take Leningrad.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Andris Nelsons at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Photo by Marco Borggreve © 2016 Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Andris Nelsons is in his third year at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the fiery Latvian conductor has been nothing but good for this august ensemble. On Tuesday night, Mr. Nelsons led the first of three Carnegie Hall concerts this week. He opened his New York run with an ambitious pairing: a new concerto by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina and the longest symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich: the Seventh.

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.)

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Idomeneo

Power, mystery and a gigantic sea monster in Mozart's drama.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The supernatural climax of Mozart's Idomeneo.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2006 The Metropolitan Opera.

Matthew Polenzani takes on the title role in Mozart's challening drama, an opera seria thar chronicles the trials and tribulations of a Cretan king who returns from the Trojan War only to find out that the gods demand a sacrifice: his only son.