Operas @ the Met, 2022
Winter time seems the good time to go to indoor events, such as opera and ballet. I got tickets this January and March to a series of operas at the Met.
The list:
1. La Boheme, 1896 by Puccini (1858-1924)
2. Tosca, 1900 by Puccini
3. The Marriage of Figaro, 1786 by Mozart
4. Rigoletto, 1851 by Verdi (1813-1901)
5. Don Carlos, 1867 by Verdi
6. Madama Butterly, 1904 by Puccini
7. Eugene Onegin, 1879 by Tchaikovsky (1840-93)
Although I enjoyed them all but Mozart is still my fave. Madama Butterly and Eugene Onegin are all good too. Don Carlos is clearly the it boy. His giant posters (different versions) adorn the right side of the Met’s building whenever I went this season.
I haven’t seen Denyce Graves (1963-) for a long while … WHERE is she and her Carmen?
In March, I received next season 2022/3’s program in the mail. It’s a little bewildering that they still send out printed program, when our tickets could be used in smart phone app.
This sprint, February 24, to be exact, Russia invaded Ukraine. The classical world reacts to it by firing Russian conductor Valery Gergiev (1953-) and the Met cancelled Russian Anna Netrebko (1971-) who was discovered and promoted by Gergiev, with the Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska. I see Met’s explanation during the Don Carlos on March 10th (my previous opera Rigoletto was on January 25th).
The leading ladies in Madama Butterly, Butterfly and Suzuki are played by Eleonora Buratto (1982-) and Elizabeth DeShong respectively. Both are Caucasians. Wondering, why Met doesn’t use Asian sopranos for the parts, and why no complains heard from the Asian community – there was a controversy during David H Hwang’s M. Buttery in 1988, over casting.
The Playbill for Eugene Onegin has a paragraph on its history at the Met. It premiered in 1920 in Italian, and in 1977, sung in Russian and was conducted by James Levine (1943-2021). Levine had been with the Met for four decades (1976-2016) and was disgraced over his sexual misconduct. Comparing to pulling down General Robert E. Lee’s statues, Levine enjoys far better treatment. History should be remembered as truthfully as we could record it.
