Richard Sasanow - Page 9

By the time Lise Davidsen appeared in the Met’s December revival of Tchaikovsky’s QUEEN OF SPADES, the company had already scheduled the soprano for five other major roles in seasons to come. One opera they didn’t schedule was TANNHAUSER, with its spectacular aria for Elisabeth--“Dich teure Halle”--which Davidsen has made it something of a calling card. She did, however, use it to kick off her recital in the MET STARS IN CONCERT series at Norway’s Oscarshall palace, which can be heard on demand through September 9.

It's hardly a secret that during the Met's shutdown, the company has been treating audiences with nightly telecasts of everything from the company's current 'Live In HD' series to some scratchy videos that still had decent sound. All of them, however, can also be found on the Met's online subscription series, THE MET OPERA ON DEMAND, along with some audio highlights of extraordinary Saturday afternoon broadcasts. It's worth shelling out the money for this kind of quality.

Even though soprano Renee Fleming had a big farewell to her role as the Marschallin in DER ROSENKAVALIER in the Met’s recent production premiere, she seems far from the end of her career, not only continuing to concertize but even in opera. So, it was no surprise that she showed up on the roster of the Met’s pay-for-view concerts series, Met Stars Live in Concert.

When was the last time you heard a concert at the Met for $20? It could have been Saturday afternoon--with Jonas Kaufmann kicking off an online, live concert series, MET STARS LIVE IN CONCERT. It helped to remind us what we're missing without live opera and stars worth going out of the way for.

Here's a look at how 'Light Shall Lift Us; Singers Unite in Song' (for OPERA America), a video project featuring 107 opera singers in “a song of hope and solidarity” by Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell, came together to help raise up the spirits of their communities as we deal with COVID-19. It went 'live' on May 14 at 1:30 pm EST.

Over the last five years, Opera Philadelphia has presented an impressive group of new operas it has commissioned, along with some classics from the standard rep. Starting tomorrow, we'll get a look at some of the best of them, with the company's Digital Festival running through May 29, available on YouTube and the company's website.

In the midst of this COVID-19 crisis that is gripping the world--and keeping so many people in quarantine--the Metropolitan Opera managed to pull off a brilliantly executed music coup. It connected stars, chorus members and orchestral musicians in an “At-Home Gala”--a combination fund-raiser for the Met with wonderful entertainment. And the technology worked!

For all you lovelorn, “live opera”-lovers, the Met is coming to the rescue from COVID-19 this afternoon, Saturday April 25, at 1pm New York time, with a gala concert featuring over 40 artists performing direct from their homes around the world.

Luckily for viewers on the Metropolitan Opera's “Met on Demand”—with selections available free in this time of COVID-19, on your laptop or as apps for your phone or tablet—there were a couple of knee-slappers thrown in among the drama of AIDA, PARSIFAL and ROMEO ET JULIETTE this week. Two of my favorites were there: Donizetti's DON PASQUALE and Verdi's FALSTAFF.

Some people dream of a White Christmas--or at least an end to the horrors of COVID-19 and a semblance of life returned to normal. I'll drink to that. But high on my list of events I'm hoping to hear in a world turned back on its feet, is the return of Richard Strauss's DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN to the Met.

The Met on Demand had another week of exciting performances, from the divine [Rossini's IL  BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA] to the, well, the divine [Adams's NIXON IN CHINA].

Thanks to the French online service, France.tv, opera-goers in New York have had a chance to see what lies ahead with the new production of Mozart's DON GIOVANNI by Ivo van Hove, that, health crisis be willing, will make its debut at the Met next March.

In these crazy days when no theatres are open to the public, the Live in HD series on PBS is a lifeline to the Met; last Friday, on PBS' Great Performances (on WNET in New York, at least) there was this fall's TURANDOT with a first-rate cast.

It's a busy week for Piotr Beczala, at least on the Met on Demand. It started with Monday's free broadcast of 2014's RUSALKA, opposite Renée Fleming (when the interview that follows was conducted) to Saturday night's free ADRIANA LECOUVREUR performance opposite Anna Netrebko, from January 2019. You can also hear him in excerpts from WERTHER, opposite Joyce DiDonato, which was scheduled for last month at the Met, but sidelined by COVID-19. The arias were recorded in JDD's living room, to give audiences a glimpse of what they might have missed in the complete performance.

The Met's first cancellation due to coronavirus concerns was the revival of Rossini's LA CENERENTOLA, the opera retelling of the Cinderella story, set to star mezzo Tara Erraught in the title role and one of its biggest tenor stars, Javier Camarena as Don Ramiro, her prince. The opera holds a particular place in Camarena's history at the Met: It made him an overnight sensation when he was tapped to replace Juan Diego Florez and blew the roof off--a real-life Cinderella story.

The Met had a wonderfully conducted performance of Wagner's DER FLIENGENDE HOLLANDER with a marvelous singer in the title role. Unfortunately, that was in 2017, when the Met's Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin was on the podium and Michael Volle was the forceful Hollander. This time around, when Francois Girard's new Expressionist production had its premiere the other night, with Valery Gergiev at the helm and Evgeny Nikitin as the Dutchman, things did not go so smoothly.

When I recently interviewed Lisette Ororpesa, just before her first Violetta at the Met, she told me that people are always asking her “Isn't TRAVIATA an opera for three different sopranos? One soprano per act?” and her answer is: “Yeah, if you want to look at it that way...' She proved that she didn't need any help from a doppelganger in pulling off all the varied aspects of Verdi's courtesan, with a stellar performance.

Saturday night, I heard soprano Lisette Oropesa deliver an alternatingly delicious and desperately dramatic Violetta in Verdi's LA TRAVIATA at the Met. Less than a day later, she was the emcee at the GRAND FINALS CONCERT of the Met's National Council Auditions--where she was a winner herself in 2005 and “it changed my life,” she recalled--delivering the latest batch of opera babies into the big time.

Someone once asked me, long ago, “Don't you ever get Baroque-d out?” The answer then--when instrumental music was more widely available than vocal--was a firm “no.” Today, when there's the music of Handel and his contemporaries everywhere, the answer remains the same, particularly when it's in the right hands, like Joyce DiDonato (JDD) in AGRIPPINA on disk and recently at the Met. There are also some less familiar--but very much worthy--names, like countertenor Jakub Jozef Orlinski on his Erato CD, “Facce d'Amore,” and mezzo Ann Hallenberg, at Carnegie's Zankel Hall last week with the Venice Baroque Orchestra.

It's been a big year for soprano Lisette Oropesa, with starring roles at major European houses. But in this country, it's something else entirely: She won the Richard Tucker Award and the Met's Beverly Sills Award. That was followed by a pair of name-above-the-title roles, her first at the Met: her role debut in Massenet's MANON and, this week, her house role debut as Verdi's Violetta in LA TRAVIATA.