Wow. The Met just narrowly avoided a shut-down.

Met vs. Unions

Been following interesting discussion about that on Facebook because I am "friends" (in real life as well) with one of their semi regular conductors, Steven White, (and his wife Elizabeth Futral).

Steven is the General Director of our local opera company in Roanoke which is why I am lucky enough to know these two neat people.

If you haven't already checked, here's the new season of Met simulcasts.

Oct. 11 -- Verdi's Macbeth, with Anna Netrebko and Željko Lucic. This is the Adrian Noble production from five or six years ago that I liked so much, with its chorus of slatternly witches that I still think about now and then plus the best sleepwalking scene I've ever seen.

Oct. 18 -- Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, with Ildar Abdrazakov

Nov. 1 -- Bizet's Carmen, with Anita Rachvelishvili

Nov. 22 -- Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia, with Isabel Leonard and Christopher Maltman

Dec. 13 -- Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , with Johan Reuter and a whole lot of other people

Jan. 17 -- Lehár's The Merry Widow, with Renée Fleming

Jan. 31 -- Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, with Vittorio Grigolo

Feb. 14 -- Double Bill: Tchaikovsky's Iolanta with Anna Netrebko, and Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle with Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko

Mar. 14 -- Rossini's La Donna del Lago, with Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez (Met premiere)

Apr. 25 -- Double Bill: Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana with Marcelo Alvarez and Eva Maria Westbroek and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci with Alvarez again and Patricia Racette

Cav and Pag for dessert, how nice. From what I can gather, Cav will have a traditional production, but Pag will be set at a 1948 truck stop in the same village, and the players are a roaming vaudeville troupe. Vaudeville? There was no more vaudeville in 1948; it was long dead.

The other double bill strikes me as rather strange -- Tchaikovsky and Bartok? What a clash of musical styles. Can't wait to see it.

Thanks. I have not checked but am assuming we in the boondocks will still get these at the local college...our local theaters won't show them...

Hmm. No Puccini, Donizetti, Strauss...but two Rossini. Interesting.

Hmmm...Lucia and Boheme are on the schedule but not for broadcast...and you are right about the Strauss....The season list is here: http://www.metopera.org/metopera/season/index.aspx?type=current&sn=st

Barbara, is that Carmen the same production as the one Elena Garanca appeared in a few years ago?

Yes. The new productions are Le Nozze di Figaro, The Merry Widow, Iolanta/Bluebeard's Castle (co-production with Polish National Opera), La Donna del Lago, and Cav/Pag.

The new Merry Widow is interesting (in advance, at least) on several counts. It is directed by Susan Stroman (a star alumna of my own University of Delaware, by the way), who is famous on Broadway for her visual and choreographic flair. Theater directors in opera are nothing new, of course, but we'll have to wait and see if she, who began as a dancer and deviser of tricky dance routines (as in Crazy for You and the Oklahoma! revival) adapts to opera needs. Or operetta, in this case.

Likewise, importing musical-theater performers for "special" featured roles has been going on a long time -- the Met has always done so for Frosch in Fledermaus (Jack Gilford, Sid Caesar, Danny Burstein) -- but entrusting a soubrette role, even in "light" opera, to a Broadway leading lady like Kelli O'Hara (The Pajama Game, South Pacific, Bridges of Madison County) is something new for them. Of course she, like many of her type, studied legitimate voice in college and performed in their opera productions. But putting it on the line after all this time is another matter. I'm curious, for sure.