Happy Monday and welcome to Week 25 at the Met. This week finds another “theme” week. All of this week’s operas are arguably 20th Century classics. The operas range from Elektra which debuted in 1909 to The Tempest which had its world premiere in 2004.
I suppose one could also argue that an opera that wasn’t seen until 2004 isn’t truly a 20th Century classic, but what is four years amongst opera aficionados?
This week’s programming reflects a departure from the Metropolitan Opera norms as one opera, Gershwins’s Porgy and Bess, will be available for two days instead of just one.
Each production becomes available at 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT on the Metropolitan Opera website. Every opera remains available for 23 hours. They are heavily promoting their Met Stars Live in Concert series so you’ll have to go past those promos to find the streaming productions. Schedules and timings may be subject to change.
If you read this preview early enough on Monday, August 31st, you might still have time to catch the 2013-2014 season production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff.
Here’s the full line-up for Week 25 at the Met:
Monday, August 31 – R. Strauss’s Elektra
Conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen; starring Nina Stemme, Adrianne Pieczonka, Waltraud Meier, Burkhard Ulrich and Eric Owens. This Patrice Chéreau production is from the 2015-2016 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was streamed on April 20th.
Richard Strauss’s Elektra had its world premiere in Dresden in 1909. The libretto was written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and was based on his 1903 drama of the same name.
For a one-act opera, Elektra has a tangled web of intrigue at its core. Simply put, Elektra is enraged by the murder of her father, King Agamemnon. Elektra’s mother, Klytämnestra, convinced her lover, Aegisth, to kill her husband. Once Elektra finds out, she is out for nothing short of total revenge and enlists her brother, Orest, to kill their mother.
When Elektra was first presented, critics were deeply divided. Perhaps none more so than Ernest Newman, then London’s most important former music critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw. Newman found the opera abhorrent. Shaw fiercely defended it. Their argument about the merits of Strauss’s opera were published in a series of letters in The Nation.
Of this production, The New York Times‘ Anthony Tommasini said, “…nothing prepared me for the seething intensity, psychological insight and sheer theatrical inventiveness of this production on Thursday night, conducted by the brilliant Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mr. Chéreau’s partner in this venture from the start. A superb cast is headed by the smoldering soprano Nina Stemme in the title role.”
Tuesday, September 1 – Britten’s Peter Grimes
Conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles; starring Patricia Racette, Anthony Dean Griffey and Anthony Michaels-Moore. This John Doyle production is from the 2007-2008 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that was streamed on May 14th.
Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes had its world premiere in London in 1945. The libretto was written by Montagu Slater who based it on a poem in The Borough by George Crabbe.
In Peter Grimes, the title character is facing intense questioning after his apprentice has died. The townsfolk believe him to be responsible, the coroner rules he was not. Shortly afterward, Grimes recruits another apprentice, John. Ellen, the only person in town who believes Grimes, later finds herself questioning Grimes when she finds that John has intense bruising on his neck. Word spreads quickly about the boy’s injuries and the people in town want an investigation. What follows is tragic on multiple levels.
The title role was written by Benjamin Britten for his partner, Peter Pears. In the mid 60s, Jon Vickers’s performance has been considered definitive for quite some time.
John Doyle, best known for his minimalist productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals, made his Met Opera debut with this production of Peter Grimes. Griffey, having sung this opera a few times before this production, finally found his way into a lead role at the Met.
Anthony Tommasini, writing in the New York Times, found some unique qualities in how Griffey tackled the part: “Mr. Griffey, even though his voice has heft and carrying power, is essentially a lyric tenor. And it is disarming to hear the role sung with such vocal grace, even sweetness in places. Every word of his diction is clear. You sense Grimes’s dreamy side struggling to emerge. The moments of gentleness, though, make Mr. Griffey’s impulsive fits of hostility, his bursts of raw vocal power, seem even more threatening.”
Wednesday, September 2 – John Adams’s Nixon in China
Conducted by John Adams; starring Kathleen Kim, Janis Kelly, Robert Brubaker, Russell Braun, James Maddalena and Richard Paul Fink. This Peter Sellars production is from the 2010-2011 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that streamed on April 1st.
Nixon in China had its world premiere in Houston in 1987 in a production directed by Peter Sellars. Inspired by President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, the opera features a libretto by Alice Goodman.
It was wholly unlikely that someone as anti-Communist as Nixon would make a trip to China. That trip forged new relations between the two countries and helped thaw the icy relationship the United States had with the then Soviet Union. Nixon and his wife Pat, Chou En-lai, Mao Tse-tung, Henry Kissinger and Madame Mao all play prominent roles in the opera.
This 2011 production, while a Met debut for Nixon in China, was not the New York debut of the opera. It was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 1987 following its premiere in Houston. Critical reaction upon its premiere was quite mixed. By the time this production (which founds Sellars revisiting his original work and that of a 2006 revival), Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times called it an “audacious and moving opera.”
Thursday, September 3 – Berg’s Lulu
Conducted by Lothar Koenigs; starring Marlis Petersen, Susan Graham, Daniel Brenna, Paul Groves, Johan Reuter and Franz Grundheber. This William Kentridge production is from the 2015-2016 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that streamed on June 2nd.
Alban Berg used two Frank Wedekind plays, Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora, as the inspiration for this opera. The plays were both about the title character, Lulu. The composer died before finishing the final act of the opera. It’s debut in 1937 in Zurich was of the incomplete opera. In 1979 Friedrich Cerha’s orchestration of the act 3 sketches were added to the work Berg had completed and that version is commonly performed.
Lulu (Petersen) is the engineer of her own destruction. She’s a mysterious young woman whose fall from grace is depicted over the course of three acts.
Kentridge received wide praise from audiences and critics alike. What drew many people to this particular production was that soprano Petersen, who had performed Lulu for nearly twenty years, retired the role after these performances at the Met.
Friday, September 4 and Saturday, September 5th – The Gershwins’s Porgy & Bess
Conducted by David Robertson; starring Angel Blue, Golda Schultz, Latonia Moore, Denyce Graves, Frederick Ballentine, Eric Owens, Alfred Walker and Donovan Singletary. This James Robinson production is from the 2019-2020 season.
DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel, Porgy, was the inspiration for a play written by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward. That play served as the inspiration for this opera by George Gershwin with a libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Porgy and Bess had its world premiere in 1935 at Boston’s Colonial Theatre.
In the opera, Porgy lives in Charleston’s slums. He’s disabled and spends his time begging. He is enamored with Bess and does everything he can to rescue her from an abusive lover, Crown and a far-too-seductive drug dealer, Sportin’ Life.
If you saw the Broadway version which went by the name The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, that was a truncated version and it was also modified to fit more contemporary times. The Metropolitan Opera production is the full opera as originally written by George Gershwin, Dubose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin.
Gershwin’s score features such beloved songs as Summertime, I Loves You Porgy and It Ain’t Necessarily So.
Anthony Tommasini, writing for the New York Times raved about the production and, in particular, its two stars:
“As Porgy, the magnificent bass-baritone Eric Owens gives one of the finest performances of his distinguished career. His powerful voice, with its earthy textures and resonant sound, is ideal for the role. His sensitivity into the layered feelings and conflicts that drive his character made even the most familiar moments of the music seem startlingly fresh. And, as Bess, the sumptuously voiced soprano Angel Blue is radiant, capturing both the pride and fragility of the character.”
Sunday, September 6 – Thomas Adès’s The Tempest
Conducted by Thomas Adès; starring Audrey Luna, Isabel Leonard, Alek Shrader, Alan Oke and Simon Keenlyside. This Robert Lepage production is from the 2012-2013 season. This is an encore presentation of the production that streamed on May 12th.
The Tempest by Thomas Adés had its world premiere in London in 2004. The libretto, by Meredith Oakes, is inspired by William Shakespeare’s play, but is not slave to it. There are differences.
The Duke of Milan, Prospero, has been exiled and with his daughter, Miranda, they have been set to sea. They ultimately land on an island filled with spirits. Amongst those spirits are Ariel and the monster, Caliban. Prospero, who has magical powers, causes a ship carrying the King of Naples and his son Ferdinand to wreck during a storm Prospero created. Relations both personal and professional collide leaving each of the participants changed and one of the characters alone in the island.
Between its London premiere and its debut at the Met in 2012, there had already been four other productions of The Tempest. Few contemporary operas get that many productions in so short a period of time.
Alex Ross, writing for The New Yorker, said of Adés’ opera (one of at least fifty operas based on Shakespeare’s play), “The Tempest is the opposite of a disappointment; it is a masterpiece of airy beauty and eerie power. As if on schedule, Adès, at thirty-two, is now the major artist that his earliest works promised he would become.”
That’s a wrap on Week 25 at the Met. Next week will feature all French operas.
Photo: Nina Stemme in the title role of Strauss’s Elektra. (Photo byMarty Sohl/Courtesy of the Met Opera)