Concert Review: Songs For An Empty Pocket

Musicians gather at Symphony Space to celebrate John Eaton's birthday.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson pays tribute to the late John Eaton, using the sound-box
of a Steinway piano as a natural onstage amplifier. Photo by Jeremy Tressler.

It was part birthday party, and part wake for a composer who died in 2015. On Saturday night, composers, music lovers and the curious gathered at the Leonard Nimoy Theater at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side to commemorate what would have been the 84th birthday of John Eaton: composer, inventor and iconoclast.  Mr. Eaton was a well-loved teacher and creator of the "Pocket Opera" series, which offered quirky, chamber-sized stagings on the little downstairs stage at Symphony Space. He was a kind, gentle and towering figure and his students came forward to create this evening of their work. The concert, "Celebrating John Eaton's Legacy" was presided over by the composer's widow Nelda Nelson-Eaton.

Across Oceans of Sand

The Met's new Aida takes Verdi back to Las Vegas.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Opened in 1993, the Luxor Las Vegas hotel is an inspiration for Michael Mayer's
second Verdi production to be set in America's playground.
Photo by Miguel Hermoso Cuesta for Wikipedia Commons.

Even as the Metropolitan Opera bids farewell to its classic production of Verdi's Aida, expectations are high for its successor which is planned for opening night of the 2020 season. Details have leaked to Superconductor regarding the staging, which will be the third Verdi opera directed at the Met by Michael Mayer. Mr. Mayer, the director who moved Verdi's earlier opera Rigoletto to Las Vegas, Nevada in the 1960s (with the Duke reimagined as a casino entertainer and the title character as his opening act, a Don Rickles-style insult comic) will return to Sin City next year. His plan: move Verdi's Egyptian drama to the flashy modern casinos of that city's current Strip.

A Treasure Hidden in the Earth

A fifth chapter of Wagner's Ring has been found...and authenticated.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Siegfried battles Fafner in Arthur Rackham's classic drawings based on Wagner's Ring.

Researchers digging through a hidden sub-basement in Schloss Neuschwanstein in south-western Bavaria have discovered a hidden archive belonging to the castle's owner, King Ludwig II. In that archive was found a leather folio of sheet music: the complete score of a previously unheard chapter of Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. The discovery sent shock waves through the halls of Wagner scholarship.

Opera Review: All the Pretty Horses

Die Walküre returns at the Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Fearless: Christine Goerke makes her Act II entrance as Brunnhilde in Die Walküre.
Photo by Richard Termine © 2019 The Metropolitan Opera.

It's hard to believe, but the Metropolitan Opera’s controversial Robert Lepage production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle has been treading the boards at America's largest opera house since 2011. That's ten years that New York's Wagner addicts have had to deal with this technologically innovative but sometimes balky production, set on a hi-tech platform ("the Machine") that uses spinning and rotating teeter-totter boards to create scenery for this massive mythological work. This week marked the return of Die Walküre, the most popular section of the Ring. It was also the only Ring opera to be included in this season's Live in HD schedule. Saturday's matinee, the second performance of the season. was also the opera's broadcast day.