Category: Redbox

It may be as well to put matters in context by saying that Don Carlo is a
favorite opera of mine (and of all Verdi lovers), and that I found the Met’s new staging highly satisfactory, vocally very good if less than top flight, orchestrally thrilling—and that I hope to catch it again this
season. (Interesting rumors have been heard about the alternate tenor.)

Minnesota Opera’s recent production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola certainly is a fantastical, comical portrayal of the classical fairy tale.

The last curtain call at the opera usually goes to the title character, the star of the work just performed. At the end of the Met’s new Boris Godunov, the calls begin with a solo call for the title character, RenÈ Pape as Boris, and conclude with one for the Metropolitan Opera Chorus all by themselves.

Dame Joan Sutherland, ‘La Stupenda’, sang her first Gilda at Covent
Garden in 1957 under the baton of Sir Edward Downes, and sang the role many times and to great acclaim on the ROH stage.

It will be no surprise to me, a year or five from now, when someone falls to
her or his death from the guy-wires that configure so much of Robert
Lepage’s new state-of-the-art (ah! But which art?) production of Der
Ring des Nibelung.

The Royal Opera is hardly renowned for its commitment to baroque opera, and
even the great Handel still gets short shrift in his adopted city’s major
house.