A Homegrown Coloratura’s Breezy Donizetti Heroine
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 4 January 2006]
In recent years, Metropolitan Opera audiences have excitedly greeted the work of several brilliant young coloratura sopranos, including Anna Netrebko and, just this season, the German-born Diana Damrau, who had a splendid Met debut as Zerbinetta in Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos.”
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L’elisir d’amore, Metropolitan Opera, New York
By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 4 January 2006]
It did not look particularly promising on paper.
The vehicle to be cranked out at the Met on Monday was a just another revival of L’elisir d’amore. Donizetti’s bel-canto comedy has been subjected to hack treatment in recent years. The terminally cute production, dating back to 1991, is predicated on pink-pastel flats by Beni Montresor that pretend all the world’s a pretty-pretty stage within a stage. The latest cast is not studded with stars.
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Viva Donizetti
BY JAY NORDLINGER [NY Sun, 4 January 2006]
The Metropolitan Opera has revived maybe its most delightful show: “L’Elisir d’Amore” (“The Elixir of Love”), by Donizetti, in the 1991 production of John Copley. I’ve said that this production looks like a Valentine’s Day card: all pinks and ruffles. Then again, it can look like an Easter basket. At any rate, it’s irresistible.
And, no, the Met is not staging “The Elixir” on Valentine’s Day – that night, they’re doing “Samson and Delilah,” not nearly as fun. (Something about having one’s eyes gouged out.)
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image_description=Ruth Ann Swenson