NYTimes Calendar for the Fall and into Next Spring

[lennygoran]

For me it seems the opera options for this year have been lessened-NYCO really let me down. This article has a long list of events.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/arts ... ctionfront



There's always this. Len
THE MILE-LONG OPERA’ A bit of performance-world Mad Libs — bringing together the architect Elizabeth Diller, the composer David Lang and the writers Anne Carson and Claudia Rankine — this spectacle, the latest massive choral immersion to hit the city, will feature a thousand singers on the High Line. Opens Oct. 3; milelongopera.com.

[John F]

I see that Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra will do Martinu's "Julieta" in concert this season. Maybe they'll produce it at Bard College on the stage, but this mysteriously beautiful opera, especially the second act, deserves to be heard even if it isn't seen.

[lennygoran]

I see that Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra will do Martinu's "Julieta" in concert this season. Maybe they'll produce it at Bard College on the stage, but this mysteriously beautiful opera, especially the second act, deserves to be heard even if it isn't seen.

John thanks-it would be great if Bard did the full opera next summer. Len

[jbuck919]

When I was relatively new here, one could not find this information unless one watched for the special print edition of the Times that came out every fall. Sometimes I missed it. Not that I could make many performances even in those days, but just the reading of the possibilities was enjoyable, and that includes all the arts, not just music. I guess I just have a good imagination, which may account for why my CD and vinyl collections are so much smaller than those of many of our members. If the Met put on Julietta, nobody would come, which helps to explain why their repertoire is still so conservative, and why we so much miss the City Opera.

[John F]

You may be right about "Julietta" at the Met, but when I saw it at the English National Opera in 1978, sung in English and conducted by Charles Mackerras, the 2,200-seat Coliseum was pretty much full; at least the attendance didn't prevent the ENO from mounting a second production in 2012.

In the old days, when Julius Rudel was the head of the New York City Opera, they led the way for the discovery (in the US) of Janacek's operas, with a notable production of "The Makropoulos Case," and also brought Korngold's "Die tote Stadt" back from the dead; "Julietta" has much in common with both of these operas. If New York or the US still had a full-fledged second opera company as London and other great cities do, who knows? But we don't any longer, and the current company that goes under the name of New York City Opera doesn't have the resources to put on as demanding a show as "Julietta."

[THEHORN]

Jbuck, I don't think the Met's repertoire is all that conservative . Within the past 20 years or so it as broadened and diversified its repertoire considerably , doing numerous operas you would never have expected them to do in its early years at Lincoln center .
This year they're doing the US premiere of "Marnie " by Nico Muhly, based on the famous Hitchcock film . Last season they did "Exterminating Angel " by Thomas Ades, and based on the PBS telecast I saw, the audience reaction was very positive .
They've already done their SECOND production of Dvorak's "Rusalka " . "L'Amour De Loin " by Kaaia Saariaho, only the second opera by a woman composer in Met history . was also well received by the audience from all accounts . "Satyagraha " by Philip Glass returns this season , and they've done Doctor Atomic, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer by John Adams .
They've revived The Pearl Fishers by Bizet and Prince Igor by Borodin recently . And Rossini Guillaume Tell after nearly 80 years absence . Plus their first productions of his Armida, Le Comte Ory and La Donna Del Lago , Massenet's Cendrillon last season and so forth .

[jbuck919]

Jbuck, I don't think the Met's repertoire is all that conservative . Within the past 20 years or so it as broadened and diversified its repertoire considerably , doing numerous operas you would never have expected them to do in its early years at Lincoln center .
This year they're doing the US premiere of "Marnie " by Nico Muhly, based on the famous Hitchcock film . Last season they did "Exterminating Angel " by Thomas Ades, and based on the PBS telecast I saw, the audience reaction was very positive .
They've already done their SECOND production of Dvorak's "Rusalka " . "L'Amour De Loin " by Kaaia Saariaho, only the second opera by a woman composer in Met history . was also well received by the audience from all accounts . "Satyagraha " by Philip Glass returns this season , and they've done Doctor Atomic, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer by John Adams .
They've revived The Pearl Fishers by Bizet and Prince Igor by Borodin recently . And Rossini Guillaume Tell after nearly 80 years absence . Plus their first productions of his Armida, Le Comte Ory and La Donna Del Lago , Massenet's Cendrillon last season and so forth .

You have a good point, but most of the operas that you mention which I actually know, more or less, are incredibly mediocre. There are things the Met does that it should not do, and things it does not do that it should do. I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

[John F]

Many of the Met's company and world premieres during the last 20 years happened because of James Levine's interests and prestige. No other conductor could have gotten the Met to put on Schoenberg's "Moses und Aron," and perhaps few would have wanted to. Other world and company premieres that we owe personally to Levine include Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini," Corigliano's "The Ghosts of Versailles," and Harbison's "The Great Gatsby," among many others.

In general, American opera companies venture beyond what they've previously done in order to please an artist important to them. It's Thomas Hampson to whom we owe the Met's finally premiering Busoni's "Doktor Faust"; Levine was originally announced as the conductor but in the event, it wasn't he but Philippe Auguin who conducted. Floyd's "Susannah" was staged for Renée Fleming. And we owe the dubious pleasure of acquaintance with Wolf-Ferrari's "Sly" and Alfano's "Cyrano de Bergerac" to Placido Domingo's wish to sing the title roles at the Met.

As Levine's influence declined and then ended, the Met's world and company premieres have been chosen by the company's general manager Peter Gelb, and I thoroughly approve of many of his choices: Adès's "The Tempest," Saariaho's "Amour de Loin," even Muhly's "Two Boys," are not in my view mediocre, and in older repertoire, Rossini's "Le Comte Ory" and Massenet's "Cendrillon" make a welcome change from "Barber of Seville" and "Werther." Of course that's a matter of taste, and no doubt jbuck919's differs from mine, nor would I go so far as THEHORN typically does.

Heggie's "Dead Man Walking" is coming in a couple of seasons; I saw it at City Opera and think it's deserving. Further down the road is Brett Dean's "Hamlet," recently premiered at Glyndebourne and, from the reviews, very much to be taken seriously. As for "Marnie," which as I've said is not based on the Hitchcock film but on the novel, it remains to be seen how that turns out. Clearly, Muhly is a favorite of Gelb's, and while he wouldn't be my candidate as the foremost living opera composer, I don't know who is.

As for older works, such as Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler" and Pfitzner's "Palestrina," these have been seen in New York though by other companies, and they head a pretty long list of important 20th century operas to add to those by Berg and Stravinsky. If Yannick Nézet-Séguin eventually is able to have his way with new repertory, as I don't expect he will be for a while, maybe he will choose to fill in some of those gaps. But I wouldn't count on it, as what we know of him so far doesn't indicate any particular agenda concerning repertoire or anything else.

[Rach3]

WQXR's recommendations, fww ( I wont be there ):

https://www.wqxr.org/story/experts-conc ... -fall-2018