Angela Gheorghiu has canceled her Faust performances at the Met next season.

"Ms. Gheorghiu’s manager, Jack Mastroianni, said she could not abide the production, which is being directed by Des McAnuff. Mr. McAnuff has moved the action from its more typical 19th-century setting to the World War I era."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/arts/m...a.html?emc=eta1

Last night I went to see Carmen in 3-D, and I absolutely loved it. Garanca remains my favorite Carmen, but I did like Christine Rice...oh, I liked everyone in the cast! Covent Garden pulled out all the stops; this production was much better than the Met's last year, and that one wasn't exactly shabby. "The Gypsy Song" was a real show-stopper, better than any Big Number spectacle I've ever seen on Broadway. It was EXCITING!! The woman sitting next to me kept going "Wow. Wow. Wow." I loved it.

Incidentally, there was more spoken dialogue in this production than I've ever heard before; it was quite extensive, actually. One of the many early versions? Anyway, this was the best ten bucks I've spent in years.

Wow.

Natalie/Lucia tomorrow.

That's the first Lucia I've seen where the tenor almost stole the show.

I thought he did steal the show. Calleja has come a long way. That was a star performance. Loved Dessay, as always, but Lucia is no longer just the woman's opera. It was grand, from start to finish...except for the brown set. Enough with the brown!

He has indeed come a long way. I first saw him in 1998 in a smallish role at the Wexford Festival. Two years later, he was the big star at Wexford (in Adam's Si jétais roi), but I found his quick vibrato rather bothersome. More recently, his Alfredo (Traviata) at Covent Garden wasn't too bad, but his acting wasn't all that convincing, IMO - basically, he's a bit of a stick. Still, kudos to him for being the Verdi tenor de nos jours.

He didn't seem sticklike to me. But maybe I'm too easily impressed, and I WAS impressed. But I would have liked the production better if I could have just seen the stage better. Why was everything so dark? That was worse than the brown. The sets were realistic except for the stylized graveyard in the last scene. Why the switch?

Well, you have to expect things like that in a Mary Zimmerman production. And the inadequate lighting. And the brown. I hated the way the Sextet was staged, with a photographer moving around and arranging five of them for a group portrait. It was exceptionally distracting at a moment I wanted no distraction at all.

I, too, was impressed by Calleja. He's only in his early 30s, so the best is yet to come. Dessay had trouble with her highest notes; she had to yell them. But lower down, she sounded better than the last time I heard/saw her (Sonambula), almost as if she was caressing the notes with her voice. (That's a bit twee, but I can't think of another way to describe it.) I liked everybody in this production.

Let me make a guess here...La Pique Dame is one of Andrew's favorite operas. Yes/No?