Opera Review: The Redemption of the Dissolute

The Met finally gets Don Giovanni right.
by Paul J. Pelkonen


In the classic Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day, a caddish weatherman is trapped in a small Pennsylvania town in midwinter. He is forced to relive the same events over and over until (as the trailer says) "he finally gets it right." A similar redemption came last night for the Metropolitan Opera's first Don Giovanni this season, presented in a 2012 staging by  Michael Grandage. This was the fifty-first performance of this well-worn show. Last night, it finally roared to comic life. The spark: four strong debuts, three on stage and one in the orchestra pit.

2019-2020 Season Preview: Owed to Joy

Carnegie Hall announces a season-long celebration of all things Beethoven.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Came back haunted: the spirit of Ludwig van Beethoven visits Carnegie Hall in the 2019-2020 season.
Photo courtesy Carnegie Hall, alteration by the author. 

The music of Ludwig van Beethoven, particularly the symphonies, piano sonatas and string quartets, forms the central thrust of the 2019-2020 Carnegie Hall schedule. The schedule was unveiled today at the traditional yearly press conference at the historic venue. The emphasis on Beethoven is for calendar reasons: next year marks his sestercentennial or 250th birthday. (A more cynical blog than this might also add that Beethoven's music remains an evergreen source of tickets and subscriptions, but that's not something we'd ever say in print.)

Opera Review: Disenchantment

The Met revives its fairy tale twin bill of Tchaikovsky and Bartók.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Two sides of marriage. Left, Matthew Polenzani and Sonya Yoncheva in Iolanta. Right, Angela Denoke and Gerald
Finley as Mr. and Mrs. Bluebeard. Photos by Marty Sohl © 2019 The Metropolitan Opera. Collage by the author.

Part of the problem with short one-act operas is figuring out how to pair them off. On Monday night, the Met offered its second performance this season of a very unconventional double bill: Tchaikovsky's fairy tale Iolanta and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. The first is an idealized boy-meets-girl story, originally written to be paired with The Nutcracker. The second is Bartók's only opera: a chilling portrait of married life gone very wrong. The production, which premiered in Warsaw, is the brain-child of director Mariusz Trelinski, and this performance marks its first revival since 2015.

The Superconductor Interview: Cornelius Meister

The German conductor gets ready for his Met debut with Don Giovanni.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The formation of damnation: Cornelius Meister gets ready for his Met debut with Don Giovanni.

The conductor Cornelius Meister is a fast-rising star in Europe. Having just finished a lengthy run at the helm of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, he is now the music director o the State Opera and the State Orchestra in the German city of Stuttgart.  On January 30, Mr. Meister will make his debut at the Met. His task: conducting one of Mozart's finest and darkest operas: the deliciously twisted Don Giovanni. This week, Superconductor found time to sit down with the maestro to talk all things dramma giocoso.