Robert Lepage’s production design is unforgettable, and the giant machine that serves as its centerpiece is distinctive enough to seem like its own character.
Metropolitan Opera
Posted inPerformance
A Missed Chance for Female Empowerment in the Metropolitan Opera’s Marnie
At first, the opera seemed relevant to today’s re-evaluation of gender norms. But the narrative does not bear out this interpretation.
Posted inPerformance
Mozart Hits the Coney Island Boardwalk in Remix of Così fan tutte
The Met’s new production of Così fan tutte stages the comic opera at a Coney Island-style amusement park circa the 1950s.
Posted inPerformance
A Surrealist Satire by Luis Buñuel Becomes a Grim Opera
The Metropolitan Opera’s lone contemporary production this season is an adaptation of Buñuel’s 1962 film about the Spanish aristocracy, The Exterminating Angel.
Posted inArt
Behind the Masquerade of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier
If asked to choose an opera in the category of “most satisfying,” I would choose Richard Strauss’s brilliant Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose, 1911).
Posted inArt
After 113 Years: Have We Come a Long Way?
When I was 14, after reading yet another biography of Verdi, I asked my mother, “Do women write operas?” She looked at me with incredulity and responded, “Never heard of any.”
Posted inPerformance
A Scintillating Opera Is the Met’s First by a Female Composer in 113 Years
L’Amour de Loin, by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, receives a dazzling production that sets the self-aware tale of unrequited love on a flickering sea of LED lights.
Posted inPerformance
In a New Staging of the Tale of William Tell, the Only Flaw Is the Audience
Musically and visually, the Metropolitan Opera’s first staging of Gioachino Rossini’s Guillaume Tell in over 80 years is a tremendous success.
Posted inPerformance
Splendor Is Never Enough: ‘Manon Lescaut’ at the Metropolitan Opera
The Met’s new production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, directed by Richard Eyre, takes place in a meticulously, even extravagantly realized World-War-II France, with sidewalk cafes and lots of Nazis.
Posted inArt
As the Met Abandons Blackface, a Look at the Legacy of African Americans in Opera
Inevitably, the history of Black American opera chronicles not just perseverance and accomplishment, but also racism and exclusion.
Posted inPerformance
Stravinsky’s Satiric Opera with Muddy Morals
Clouds, shadows, and other mirrors of the soul have long led protagonists into temptation in order to deliver audiences from evil.
Posted inIn Brief
Metropolitan Opera Headed for Lockout
The Metropolitan Opera is anticipating a significant labor lockout beginning August 1, the Wall Street Journal reported.