Metropolitan Opera Preview: Norma

The Bellini bel canto classic returns with a new cast.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Angela Meade (top) and Jamie Barton in the 2013 production of Norma at the Met.
Photo © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

Norma is one of those operas that is all about the soprano singing the title role. In this case, the Metropolitan Opera opened ts 2017-18 season with a new production by Sir David McVicar, starring Sondra Radvanovsky as the knife-wielding pagan priestess who reacts badly when she learns her boyfriend (the leader of the opposing Roman forces) is cheating on her....with her handmaiden. Now in the first revival of the show Angela Meade takes over the title role.

Concert Review: Solemnity Now

The Metropolitan Opera mounts an old-fashioned Verdi Requiem.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

James Levine in his element.
Photo © 2017 The Metropolitan Opera Press Department.

The fifty-one year-old auditorium of the Metropolitan Opera has certain drawbacks. Those became visible on Monday night as the venerable opera company presented the second performance this season of the Messa di Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi. This is a colossal setting of the Latin Mass for the Dead, the standard service for funerals in the Roman Catholic Church until 1970. (Like all the performances this week, this one was dedicated to the memory of the baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.)

Recordings Review: The Last Laugh

Dmitri Hvorostovsky takes his final curtain in Rigoletto.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Rigoletto, a role he sang at the Met and Covent Garden.
Photo by Johan Persson, © Royal Opera of Covent Garden

The death of baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky (from brain cancer, last week) sent an earthquake through the opera world. "Dima", as he was known was a beloved figure, for his velvety instrument and leonine stage appearance. Those qualities made him a star: an ideal leading man (in a few operas) or a bad guy you loved to root for in many others. His final recorded achievement, made earlier this year in Lithuania, is the title role in Verdi's Rigoletto

. He was well suited to play such a complex character, one who is both leading man and villain at once.

Concert Review: A Full Feast of Rare Birds

Gianandrea Noseda leads the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Because photos of conductors get boring, here's a set design for The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh from 1929.

The New York Philharmonic has returned from their mid-November residency at the University of Michigan, just in time to offer their listeners a slate of concerts as the city races toward the holiday season. The first of these programs opened Wednesday night as Gianandrea Noseda led a program of infrequently performed works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Saint-Saëns and Rachmmaninoff, making a good argument for more programs like this in the future.