Thursday, March 15, 2007
If there’s one thing you can say about the Metropolitan Opera, it’s that they don’t fuck around with the greats. This week I subjected myself to about ten hours of opera there, with two very different operas.
First was Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which started at six in the afternoon and ended at midnight. It was a brilliant. Wagnerian singers are among the most rare and the greatest of singers in opera (when Birgit Nilsson debuted in Tristan und Isolde, she made the front page of the New York Times). These singers must soar above thick orchestrations and sing for hours on-end. The Met would not stage these opera without the best in the world singing, and Tuesday night was no different. There was this stamina, the beautiful orchestrations. . . Wagner took the term “Prima Donna” seriously: literally meaning “first woman”, the first instrument of the orchestra. In Meistersinger the real stars are the men, Johan Botha and James Morris, who carried the melodies to heights all evening with seeming effortless.
Does the time go quickly over these six hours? No. Time, rather, is slowed down and we are wisked into a drama carefully conveyed through music, abstract and seamless.
The there was Wednesday night, Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Barber of Seville). A comic masterpiece and a vocal showpiece. It was starring none other then the great lyric tenor Juan Diego Florez, who single-handedly brought the house down with this second act aria. And the remainder of the cast, particulary, the Barber, Peter Mattei, who’s vocal technique hit every note of the compled runs, like pearls falling off a string. This performance got a standing ovation from the Met, which has only delivered two in all the operas I’ve been to.
So it was a week of contrasts: Wagner, Rossini, Bel Canto and Dramatic. But where else do you get this roller coaster in the same week then at the Metropolitan Opera. It was divine, and reminds me why I continue to drag my ass out of bed and go to work every day: There’s really something else in life that’s worth all the hassle.
First was Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which started at six in the afternoon and ended at midnight. It was a brilliant. Wagnerian singers are among the most rare and the greatest of singers in opera (when Birgit Nilsson debuted in Tristan und Isolde, she made the front page of the New York Times). These singers must soar above thick orchestrations and sing for hours on-end. The Met would not stage these opera without the best in the world singing, and Tuesday night was no different. There was this stamina, the beautiful orchestrations. . . Wagner took the term “Prima Donna” seriously: literally meaning “first woman”, the first instrument of the orchestra. In Meistersinger the real stars are the men, Johan Botha and James Morris, who carried the melodies to heights all evening with seeming effortless.
Does the time go quickly over these six hours? No. Time, rather, is slowed down and we are wisked into a drama carefully conveyed through music, abstract and seamless.
The there was Wednesday night, Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Barber of Seville). A comic masterpiece and a vocal showpiece. It was starring none other then the great lyric tenor Juan Diego Florez, who single-handedly brought the house down with this second act aria. And the remainder of the cast, particulary, the Barber, Peter Mattei, who’s vocal technique hit every note of the compled runs, like pearls falling off a string. This performance got a standing ovation from the Met, which has only delivered two in all the operas I’ve been to.
So it was a week of contrasts: Wagner, Rossini, Bel Canto and Dramatic. But where else do you get this roller coaster in the same week then at the Metropolitan Opera. It was divine, and reminds me why I continue to drag my ass out of bed and go to work every day: There’s really something else in life that’s worth all the hassle.
# posted by otas : 7:01 PM
