Operas inspired by great writers is the theme from Week 56 at the Met entitled From Page to Stage.
Amongst the authors whose work inspired the seven operas being streamed are Goethe, Nikolai Gogol, Victor Hugo, Alexander Pushkin, Friedrich Schiller and William Shakespeare.
All productions become available at 7:30 PM EST/4:30 PM PST and remain available for 23 hours. Schedules and timings may be subject to change.
The Met is heavily promoting their Met Stars Live in Concert series and the planned resumption of performances in the 2021-2022 season, so you’ll have to go past those announcements and promos to find the streaming productions on the Metropolitan Opera website.
If you read this column early enough on April 5th, you might still have time to catch the 2016-2017 season production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde that concludes a week celebrating Love Triangles. And if you’ve never seen this production, I strongly recommend it.
Here is the full line-up for Week 56 at the Met:
Monday, April 5 – Gounod’s Faust
Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; starring Marina Poplavskaya, Jonas Kaufmann, Russell Braun and René Pape. This Des McAnuff production is from the 2011-2012 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on May 23rd, November 17th and January 27th.
Charles Gounod’s Faust had its world premiere in Paris in 1859. The libretto was written by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré who used both Carré’s play Faust et Marguerite and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, Part One as inspiration.
This oft-told story is about a man who sacrifices his soul to the devil, Méphistophélès, in order to maintain his youth and the love of Marguerite.
But you know what happens when you make a deal with the devil…it’s not going to end well.
McAnuff made his Metropolitan Opera debut with this production. He is best known as the director of Jersey Boys and Ain’t Too Proud on Broadway. In his Faust he chose to set this production before and after the dropping of atom bombs in Japan in World War II.
Critics may have been divided over Des McAnuff’s approach, but they were unanimous in their praise of tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Audiences were too. His performance generated a lot of emotion from audiences attending this production.
Tuesday, April 6 – Verdi’s Rigoletto
Conducted by James Levine; starring Christiane Eda-Pierre, Isola Jones, Luciano Pavarotti, Louis Quilico and Ara Berberian. This revival of John Dexter’s 1977 production is from the 1981-1982 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was made available on August 12th and December 30th.
Victor Hugo, the author of Les Míserables, was also a playwright and it was his play, Le roi s’amuse, that served as the inspiration for Giuseppe Verdi’s opera. Francesco Maria Piave, who regularly collaborated with the composer, wrote the libretto. The opera had its world premiere in Venice, Italy in 1851.
The title character is a jester who serves the Duke of Mantua. The Duke is a seductive man who, upon learning that the woman with whom Rigoletto lives is his daughter and not his wife, makes the young woman, Gilda, his next target. Curses, assassination plots and more leave this clown without much to smile about.
For most opera fans, Pavarotti’s appearance in this production was the selling point. But for New York Times critic Edward Rothstein, he found something, or rather, someone else to admire.
“Though Luciano Pavarotti as the Duke may attract the most attention, Louis Quilico, as Rigoletto, was at the center of the drama; his passions and fears could be heard in his voice as well as seen in his face and body. His ‘La ra, la ra, la la’ seemed sobbed out by a jester who has lived too long and seen too much.”
Wednesday, April 7 – Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
Conducted by Robin Ticciati; starring Anna Netrebko, Elena Maximova, Alexey Dolgov, Peter Mattei and Štefan Kocán. This revival of the 2013-2014 Deborah Warner production is from the 2016-2017 season. This is an encore presentation of the production previously available on August 19th.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel of the same name for this opera that had its world premiere in Moscow in 1879. The composer co-wrote the libretto (using much of Pushkin’s text as written) with Konstantin Shilovsky.
Onegin is a rather selfish man. Tatyana expresses her love for him, but he rejects her saying he isn’t suited to marriage. By the time he comes to regret the way he treated her, he has also come to regret the actions that lead to a duel that killed his best friend.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky had been announced to sing the title role in this production. Due to ongoing treatments for cancer, he had to withdraw from the production. When this production opened Mariusz Kwiecien sang the role. Ten days prior to this performance that is being shown, Peter Mattei assumed the role. Exactly seven months after this performance, Hvorostovsky passed away.
Thursday, April 8 – Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini
Conducted by James Levine; starring Renata Scotto, Plácido Domingo and Cornell MacNeil. This Piero Faggioni production is from the 1983-1984 season. This is an encore presentation of the production previously available on August 18th and December 17th.
Riccardo Zandonai is not the best known of composers nor are his works regularly performed. Francesca da Ramini is his most popular work. The opera had its world premiere in Turin in 1914. The libretto was written by Tito Ricordi. Gabriele d’Annunzio’s play Francesca da Rimini was the source material that inspired this opera.
The title character, Francesca, is set to marry Giovanni (who is known by his nickname, Gianciotto.) When she is introduced to his brother, Paolo, she believes this man to be her groom. He falls in love with her, but has conspired to take Francesca away from his brother. Sibling rivalry significantly intensifies when Gianciotto’s youngest brother, Malatestino, gets involved.
The only clip I could find is, unfortunately, the finale. So if you don’t know the opera and don’t want to see how it ends, I’d advise you bypass this clip.
This production marked the first time Zandonai’s opera had been performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 66 years. It also marked the debut of Piero Faggioni.
Donal Henahan, my favorite of all New York Times opera critics had fun with this one. In particular he sharpened his pen for his comments about Scotto’s performance:
“To succeed even on its own modest level, the work needs a Francesca of irresistible stage presence and a voice to match. Renata Scotto is at a point in her career where the voice is colorless and often downright shrill. Her acting powers were stretched beyond their limits by a heavily padded scenario and heavy-handed direction by Piero Faggioni in his Met debut. The problem was not that she indulged in silent-movie histrionics, which cannot and should not be avoided in a period production of this sort, but that she seemed to have only half a dozen poses to draw upon. Her idea of showing desire for Paolo did not extend much beyond kneading her loins and clutching her thighs, which she did at tiresome length.”
Friday, April 9 – Shostakovich’s The Nose
Conducted by Pavel Smelkov; starring Andrey Popov, Alexander Lewis and Paulo Szot. This William Kentridge production is from the 2013-2014 season. This is an encore presentation of the production previously available on July 1st.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s satirical The Nose was the composer’s first opera. It had its debut in Leningrad in 1930. The libretto was by Shostakovich, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Georgy Ionin and Alexander Preis. It is based on a novel by Nikolai Gogol.
The premise is rather simple. The nose of a Saint Petersburg official leaves his face to go off and explore life by itself. The man goes in search of his missing nose and finds it suddenly much bigger and assuming a position of power over him.
The Nose was not performed in Russian again after its premiere until 1974. This was the Metropolitan Opera’s first production of the opera. It also marked the Met Opera debut of tenor Paulo Szot as the man with the missing nose. In addition to his opera career, Szot appeared on Broadway in the 2008 revival of South Pacific and won a Tony Award for his performance.
Saturday, April 10 – Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette
Conducted by Plácido Domingo; starring Anna Netrebko, Roberto Alagna, Nathan Gunn and Robert Lloyd. This revival of Guy Joosten’s 2005 production is from the 2007-2008 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was previously available on July 23rd and November 7th.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet served as the inspiration for this five-act opera by Charles Gounod that had its world premiere in Paris in 1867. The libretto was written by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré.
The opera closely follows Shakespeare’s play about two star-crossed lovers from warring families. Their love only inflames the animosity between the Montagues and the Capulets. No matter what the young lovers do to be together, fate always seems to find a way to make their love impossible. When that happens, tragedy follows.
In her review for the New York Times, Anne Midgette said of the two leads:
“You are not going to hear much better singing than this today. True, Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna can both be faulted. She is a little wild, flinging herself into roles and about the stage (especially, on Tuesday, at her first entrance); he has a certain emotional bluntness, and a certain monochrome tone. So much for the obligatory criticism. The bottom line is that Ms. Netrebko produced a luscious sound that you wanted to bathe in forever, especially in her first-act duet with Mr. Alagna. The ultimate measure for a singer should be, Is this a sound you want to listen to? The answer here was yes.”
Sunday, April 11 – Verdi’s Luisa Miller
Conducted by Bertrand de Billy; starring Sonya Yoncheva, Olesya Petrova, Piotr Beczała, Plácido Domingo, Alexander Vinogradov and Dmitry Belosselskiy. This revival of the 2002 Elijah Moshinsky production is from the 2017-2018 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was previously available on May 2nd and August 26th.
Luisa Miller was Verdi’s 15th opera. As with Don Carlo, the composer turned to Friedrich Schiller for inspiration. His work, Kabale und Liebe, was the basis for Salvadore Cammarano’s libretto. The opera had its world premiere in 1849 in Naples, Italy.
Like many a young woman, Luisa Miller’s father is not thrilled with her choice of boyfriends. Carlo, the man she loves, is not quite who he seems to be. Enter Wurm, who knows the truth about Carlo and who does everything he can to ruin their relationship because he, too, is in love with Luisa.
Domingo announced that his performance of Luisa’s father in this production would make the 149th role he had portrayed in his career. This was part of his career shift after switching from singing tenor roles to baritone roles.
Conductor de Billy was brought in after James Levine was fired from the Metropolitan Opera after an investigation into in appropriate sexual behavior.
The first opera Domingo and Levine collaborated on at the Met was a 1971 production of Luisa Miller. This production was the Met’s first of this Verdi work in over a decade.
That’s it for Week 56 at the Met. Next week the theme is Once Upon a Time. Can you guess what will be shown?
Enjoy your week and enjoy the operas!
Photo: Paulo Szot in The Nose (Photo by Ken Howard/Courtesy Metropolitan Opera)