Thursday, February 15, 2018

Metropolitan Opera 2018-19 in HD

Here is the announced season of Live in HD choices.  I would have liked Pelléas et Mélisande.  The choices we are getting are great.

  • 6-Oct-18 Aida  This is the Met standard production with Anna Netrebko as Aida.  She premiered this role in Salzburg last summer.  This will be conducted by Nicola Luisotti.
  • 20-Oct-18 Samson et Dalila   Elīna Garanča and Roberto Alagna will inhabit a new production by Darko Tresnjak, conducted by Sir Mark Elder 
  • 27-Oct-18 La Fanciulla del West  It turns out that what I want is to see is Eva Maria Westbroek as Minnie. Jonas Kaufmann is her love.  I love this opera for no reason I could explain.  The romance has to work before the opera does.  At the Met it plays in the old Giancarlo del Monaco production.  Marco Armiliato conducts.
  • 10-Nov-18 HD Marnie  Isabel Leonard, Christopher Maltman and Denyce Graves star.  This is a new opera with music by Nico Muhly, libretto by Nicholas Wright, based on the novel by Winston Graham.  They are letting us see the new stuff this time.  Robert Spano conducts.
  • 15-Dec-18HD La Traviata  Met maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Michael Mayer’s richly textured new production, featuring a dazzling 18th-century setting that changes with the seasons. Soprano Diana Damrau plays the tragic heroine, Violetta, and tenor Juan Diego Flórez returns to the Met for the first time in five seasons to sing the role of Alfredo, Violetta’s hapless lover. Baritone Quinn Kelsey is Alredo’s father, Germont, who destroys their love.  From Met advertising.  I'm not wild about traditional La Traviata productions which is what this is.
  • 12-Jan-19  Adriana Lecouvreur  This is a new production by David McVicar starring Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczala and Anita Rachvelishvili.  This is not the greatest opera, but it will be enjoyable to see Anna and Piotr perform it.  Gianandrea Noseda conducts.
  • 2-Feb-19 Carmen  This time with Roberto Alagna will be his wife Aleksandra Kurzak as Micaela.  Louis Langrée will conduct.  Our Carmen is Clémentine Margaine.  Here she is singing Carmen a few years ago in Latvia.  There's a baby crying.

  • 2-Mar-19 HD La Fille du Régiment  This is for your Javier Camarena and Pretty Yende fix.  Javi gets encored in this opera.  Maybe he will in our performance.  Enrique Mazzola conducts.
  • 30-Mar-19 HD Die Walküre  Christine Goerke plays Brünnhilde, Wotan’s willful warrior daughter, who loses her immortality in opera’s most famous act of filial defiance. Tenor Stuart Skelton and soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek play the incestuous twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. My schedule says that our Wotan is Greer Grimsley.  Philippe Jordan conducts.  We get to see Christine's Brünnhilde.  I can't wait.
  • 11-May-19 Dialogues des Carmélites  The Met's promotional materials say:  "Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the touching role of Blanche and soprano Karita Mattila, a legend in her own time, returns to the Met as the Prioress."  Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct.  I have seen this production before and was very moved.  We die that others may live.  As messages go, this one is the best.
I think this is a respectable season that shows the biases of our new maestro.

I don't promise not to edit this later.

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