What’s the best way to look at Week 12 at the Met? Is it that we are concluding our third full month of productions from the Metropolitan Opera’s archives? Has it really been three months already? Is it that there’s a wonderful mix of old, less old and very new available this week? Perhaps it’s all of it rolled into one.
The highlight for me this week is Friday’s showing of Thomas Adés’s The Exterminating Angel, based on the 1962 film by Luis Buñuel.
Each production becomes available at 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PDT and remains available at the Met Opera website for 23 hours. This means you still have time on Monday, June 1st to catch Karita Matilla in Richard Strauss’ Salome up to 6:30 PM EDT/3:30 PM PDT.
Here is the line-up for Week 12 at the Met:
Monday, June 1 – Bellini’s I Puritani
Conducted by Patrick Summers and starring Anna Netrebko, Eric Cutler, Franco Vassallo and John Relyea. This is a revival of the 1976 Sandro Sequi production from the 2006-2007 season.
Vincenzo Bellini’s I Puritani had its world premiere in Paris in 1835. The libretto was written by Carlo Pepoli. This was the composer’s final work. He died eight months after the premiere of this opera.
I Puritani is set in 1650 England. Elvira (Netrebko) and Arturo (Cutler) are going to be married. He is a Royalist and she is a Puritan. (Puritanism was a religious reform movement that originated in the late 16th Century and believed that The Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church had too much in common and weren’t rooted in the text of the Bible.) Riccardo (Vassallo), a Puritan, is also in love with Elvira and believes himself to have already been promised her. The three must navigate not just their romantic entanglement, but also the political issues and intrigue surrounding the English Civil War.
This was the Metropolitan Opera’s first production of I Puritani in a decade. By the time this production opened in late 2006, it was the fourth new role for Netrebko that year. The New York Times reported that on opening night the soprano received a lengthy ovation at the the conclusion of the second act mad scene.
Tuesday, June 2 – Berg’s Lulu
Conducted by Lothar Koenigs and starring Marlis Petersen, Susan Graham, Daniel Brenna, Paul Groves, Johan Reuter and Franz Grundheber. This William Kentridge production is from the 2015-2016 season.
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.
Wednesday, June 3 – Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice
Conducted by James Levine and starring Danielle de Niese, Heidi Grant Murphy and Stephanie Blythe. This Mark Morris production is from the 2008-2009 season.
Once again the myth of Orpheus inspired a composer. Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera, which premiered in Vienna in 1762, has a libretto by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi. (Others who have been so inspired include Haydn, Lizst and Stravinsky. The story is also the inspiration for the Tony Award-winning musical Hadestown.)
The Orpheus story is about a man (Blythe) who suddenly loses the love of his life, Euridice (de Niese). He travels to the underworld to find her. He can bring her back, but only if he truly trusts in her love.
Mezzo-soprano Blythe is a highly-acclaimed singer whose work ranges from Wagner’s Ring Cycle to Ricky Ian Gordon’s 2014 opera 27 about Gertrude Stein. The reviews she received for this production at the Met Opera were overwhelmingly positive.
Thursday, June 4 – Puccini’s Tosca
Conducted by James Conlon and starring Shirley Verrett, Luciano Pavarotti and Cornell MacNeil. This Tito Gobbi production is from the 1978-1979 season.
It is quite likely that Puccini’s Tosca was the first opera to premiere in 1900. Its first performance was on January 14 in Rome. Based on Victorien Sardou’s 1887 play of the same name, Tosca‘s libretto was written by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa.
The setting for Tosca is Rome in 1800. The Napoleonic wars were raging and political unrest was omnipresent. The opera takes place over the course of slightly less than 24 hours. Floria Tosca (Verrett) is the object of Chief of Police Baron Scarpia’s (MacNeil) lust. He uses suspicions that her lover, Mario Cavaradossi (Pavarotti), aided a political prisoner who has escaped as an opportunity to get him out of his way which will leave Tosca for himself. After capturing Cavaradossi, Scarpia says that if Tosca doesn’t become his lover, he will have Cavaradossi killed.
When Pavarotti took on this role it was one of his first forays into more demanding roles that were tougher on his vocal chords. The tenor made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera six-and-a-half years prior to this Tosca in a production of Donizett’s La fille du régiment.
Friday, June 5 – Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel
Conducted by Thomas Adès and starring Audrey Luna, Amanda Echalaz, Sally Matthews, Sophie Bevan, Alice Coote, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, Joseph Kaiser, Frédéric Antoun, David Portillo, David Adam Moore, Rod Gilfry, Kevin Burdette, Christian Van Horn and John Tomlinson. This Tom Cairns production was from the 2017-2018 season.
British composer Adés’s opera, based on the Luis Buñuel film from 1962, had its world premiere in Salzburg in 2016. Tom Cairns, who directed this production, wrote the libretto.
The Exterminating Angel depicts an elaborate dinner party where all the attendees suddenly and mysteriously cannot leave the room. As the hours turn into days, they lose any sense of privilege and pretense and are reduced to more animalistic tendencies.
If you saw the composer’s The Tempest a couple weeks ago, you know that Adés is one of our most compelling and intriguing composers.
Feel free to check out Anthony Tomassini’s review in the New York Times. I’ll just give you the last sentence from his review: “If you go to a single production this season, make it this one.”
Saturday, June 6 – Verdi’s Otello
Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and starring Sonya Yoncheva, Aleksandrs Antonenko and Željko Lučić. This Bartlett Sher production is from the 2015-2016 season.
Verdi’s opera based on Shakespeare’s play was his penultimate opera. (Falstaff was the last opera he composed.) It premiered in Milan in 1887 and features a libretto by Arrigo Boito.
Otello tells the story of a Moor (Antonenko) in the Venetian Army who is convinced by his ensign, Iago (Lučić), that Otello’s wife, Desdemona (Yoncheva), has been unfaithful.
This was Sher’s sixth production for the Metropolitan Opera. The production made history by being the first Metropolitan Opera production where the tenor singing the title role was not in blackface (that had been standard practice around the world.)
Critics were mixed in their reviews of the production, but Yoncheva received universal praise for her performance.
Sunday, June 7 – Massenet’s Thaïs
Conducted by Jesús López-Cobos and starring Renée Fleming, Michael Schade and Thomas Hampson. This John Cox production is from the 2007-2008 season.
Jules Massenet’s Thaïs had its world premiere in Paris in 1894. The libretto is by Louis Gallet based on the novel of the same name by Anatole France.
In this opera the Roman Empire is controlling Egypt. Athanaël (Hampson), a monk, has a lustful obsession with Thaïs (Fleming), which conflicts with his attempts to convert her to Christianity.
For sopranos who want to sing the title character, this is a great role. Fleming earned rave reviews for her performance this production, which originated at Lyric Opera Chicago in 2002. She and Hampson performed together in Thaïs in Chicago and have recorded the opera.
In his New York Times review of this production, Anthony Tomassini wrote, “But let’s face it. Thaïs is a diva spectacle, and Ms. Fleming plays it to the hilt. In Scene 2, during a party at Nicias’ well-appointed house, complete with solid-gold decorative palm trees, Athanaël appears, issuing apocalyptic threats to Thais, which Mr. Hampson sings chillingly. The guests ridicule the monk, forcing him to his knees and bedecking him with garlands in tribute to Venus. In the midst of a vocal outpouring, Ms. Fleming climbs a winding staircase just so she can deliver a triumphant high C from the top landing, then scurries back down to face the humiliated monk as the curtain falls.”
So ends Week 12 at the Met.
Here’s a sneak peak for Week 13: Marilyn Horne singing Rossini from 1986.
Photo: David Adam Moore, Christian Van Horn, Rod Gilfry, Christine Rice, Audrey Luna and Sir John Tomlinson in The Exterminating Angel. (Photo by Ken Howard/Courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera)