Tag Archives: nezet-seguin

MetHD 2024/25

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groundedThe Met HD in cinemas line up has been announced for 2024/25 so here’s my take on it.  The first thing to notice is that there are only eight shows.  There have been ten per season since 2012/13 and twelve before that.  This is likely a reflection of the problems with audience numbers that all North American opera companies have been having.  In the same time period the COC has cut back from 65-70 main stage performances per year to 42 and the Met’s “in house” audience problem has been well publicised.  So what does that leave us with?

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Virtual Rubies

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Like everything else the 2020 Rubies, Opera Canada‘s awards show, is going virtual this year.  It’s going out as a video, produced by Taylor Long of the COC, which will premier at 8pm on November 23rd.  Joyce El-Khoury hosts and Ben Heppner narrates the honouree videos, and then Barbara Hannigan, Michael Schade and Yannick Nezet-Seguin contribute  ‘acceptance’ speeches. Plus there’s a tribute to this year’s posthumous honouree, tenor Edward Johnson.  There are also performances by Russell Braun, Rihab Chaieb, Midori Marsh and Matt Cairns recorded in the studio with pianist and singer co-located. The show will be shown via OC’s Youtube channel.

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There’s much more about the honourees and their careers on the Opera Canada website:

Straightforward Otello from the Met

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In 2015 the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new production of Verdi’s Otello directed by Bartlett Sher.  It was broadcast in the Met in HD series and subsequently released on Blu-ray and DVD.  It’s a bit hard to judge the production on video because of the video direction.  I don’t think there are any big ideas but it’s decorative enough with arrangements and rearrangements of plexiglass wall/rooms and some effective video projections for things like the storm scene.  Only Act 4 breaks the mould with a sparse stage with just a bed and a few chairs.  I strongly suspect though from the occasional wide angle shot that there was a lot more going on visually than one sees on the video.  Costumes are 19th centuryish and quite decorative.

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No sex please, we’re the Met

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For some reason the Metropolitan opera decided, in 2014, to give an HD broadcast to Otto Schenk’s 1993 version of Dvorák’s Rusalka with revival direction by Laurie Feldman.  This production must have seriously old fashioned even then and actually looks and feels like it was created fifty years before the opera was written.  It’s not just the dark, dreary, over detailed Arthur Rackham like sets and costumes or even the the stock acting and the lame choreography.  The biggest problem is that it completely ignores that Rusalka is essentially about sex and its pathologies.  Does Schenk think that Rusalka wants to hold hands with the Prince at the cinema or take the Foreign Princess to the ball instead of Rusalka?  You would think so from this Disneyfied version.  Has the man even heard of Freud (let’s be clear Dvorák had)?  The result then is stultifyingly dull and actually just rather silly.  I’ve seen panto with more psychological depth.

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Divine Karina

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divine karinaThis review first appeared in the print edition of Opera Canada.

Divine Karina is a compilation of tracks from previously released Gauvin records on the ATMA Classiques label. There’s Purcell, plenty of Handel, Bach and other baroque composers with ventures into Mozart, Mahler and even Britten. Accompaniment is, mostly, by an assortment of Quebec period bands though the Orchestre Métropolitain with Nézet-Séguin put in an appearance for the Sehr behaglich from Mahler’s Fourth. There’s a previously unreleased track as a bonus; a duet with her Las Vegas based sister in a sort of lounge jazz style.

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Overstuffed Carmen

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It’s nearly five years since I saw the MetHD broadcast of Carmen with Alagna and Garanča.  I remember being quite impressed at the time.  Watching it again on Blu-ray I came away with a less favourable impression.  It’s not that it’s bad.  It’s not.  It just feels a bit lacklustre in a very crowded field.  Let’s start with the positives.  Elina Garanča is a very good Carmen.  She sings superbly and grows into the role dramatically as the work progresses.  She’s also a very good dancer and the production exploits that.  In fact dance is used very well throughout with specialist dancers used to stage a sort of prologue to each act as well as the obvious places being reinforced with “real” dancers.  As always, the Met doesn’t stint on this element and the dancers used are first rate.

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Faust – 10/10 for trying

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After all the negatives about McAnuff Faust my expectations for this afternoon’s HD broadcast were pretty low. I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t think the production is perfect but I don’t think it’s incoherent let alone dull. It also made me think a lot about the opera and the characters and that’s a good thing. Overall, it’s the sort of production I’d like to see more of. Far better a production that slightly over reaches than dull mediocrity.

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