The Metropolitan Opera in Your Homes—Week 35: Opera History Tour Part II
The tour through operatic history continues from last week. Week 35 kicks off in the late 19th century with Tchaikovsky’s last opera paired with Bartók’s early 20th-century expressionist masterpiece and takes us through five defining 20th-century operas, ending in the 21st century with Adès’s surrealist film-based drama. The nightly stream starts at 7:30 p.m. on the Met’s homepage and can be accessed for 22 hours. Please click on the title of each opera below for more information and the link to the full synopsis.
Monday, November 9
Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta / Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle – Starring Anna Netrebko and Piotr Becza?a in Iolanta, and Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko in Bluebeard’s Castle, conducted by Valery Gergiev. From February 14, 2015.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky got the inspiration for his final opera from reading the Danish play Kong Renés Datter (King René’s Daughter) by Henrik Hertz in The Russian Messenger magazine. His brother, Modest Tchaikovsky, wrote the libretto for this fictionalized tale about 15th-century Duchess Yolande de Bar. This production is Iolanta’s Metropolitan Opera premiere.
An opera with only two characters, Bluebeard’s Castle, is based on the French story La barbe bleue (Bluebeard) by Charles Perrault. Known as an expressionist opera because it avoids “‘traditional forms of beauty to convey powerful feelings in music,’” the gruesome legend of Bluebeard and his penchant for murdering his wives is frighteningly depicted in this particular Met production that uses technology to great effect to instill horror and mystery. On a symbolic level the opera has been seen as an allegory for the composer’s own personal, private suffering or, according to tonight’s interpreter of Judith, Nadja Michael, as the journey of a woman who faces the horrors of her past.
Tuesday, November 10
Strauss’s Salome – Starring Karita Mattila, Ildikó Komlósi, Kim Begley, Joseph Kaiser, and Juha Uusitalo, conducted by Patrick Summers. From October 11, 2008.
Richard Strauss returns with his revolutionary, incendiary one-act opera for which he also wrote the libretto from the German translation of Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. Early twentieth-century audiences were in shock at Strauss’s daring operatic cocktail of biblical, violent, and erotic themes set to music that was very progressive for its time. The opera is most famous, and, as many have decreed, infamous, for the “Dance of the Seven Veils” during which Salome takes off one veil after another until she is naked, and she demands the head of John the Baptist as her reward. Many performers wear a body stocking underneath the veils, but some have actually appeared nude at the end of the dance. Vocally demanding for dramatic soprano, the title role requires great physical agility in the veil dance, which is why some singers opt to have a dancer stand in for them. Some sopranos however, including tonight’s diva, Karita Mattila, choose to perform the dance themselves.
Wednesday, November 11
Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West – Starring Deborah Voigt, Marcello Giordani, and Lucio Gallo, conducted by Nicola Luisotti. From January 8, 2011.
Opera’s own Western is set in a mining camp during the Gold Rush era. Based on an American author’s play—David Belasco’s The Girl of the Golden West—this opera was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Native American music—Pueblo music of the Zuni people—is featured in the traveling minstrel’s aria early in the opera. The 1938 movie, The Girl of the Golden West, is based on the play with songs by Sigmund Romberg.
Thursday, November 12
Berg’s Lulu – Starring Marlis Petersen, Susan Graham, Daniel Brenna, Paul Groves, Johan Reuter, and Franz Grundheber, conducted by Lothar Koenigs. From November 21, 2015.
Alban Berg himself adapted the libretto for his opera from Frank Wedekind’s two plays featuring the notorious character of Lulu: Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box). Berg mixed genres and included a silent film at the opera’s midpoint to advance the action. With the original film lost, each production requires a new film to be shot and some stage directors forego the film completely. The story of the downfall of the young femme fatale, Lulu, is fascinatingly depicted in Berg’s progressive music.
Friday, November 13
Britten’s Peter Grimes – Starring Patricia Racette, Anthony Dean Griffey, and Anthony Michaels-Moore, conducted by Donald Runnicles. From March 15, 2008.
The literary source for this mid-twentieth-century operatic masterpiece is “Letter XXII: Peter Grimes” in George Crabbe’s The Borough, a collection of poems arranged as a series of 24 letters. A huge success, this opera was, in Britten’s words: “a subject very close to my heart — the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.” The title anti-hero is one of the most complex roles for dramatic or heroic tenor in the operatic repertoire.
Saturday, November 14
Philip Glass’s Akhnaten – Starring Dísella Lárusdóttir, J’Nai Bridges, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Aaron Blake, Will Liverman, Richard Bernstein, and Zachary James, conducted by Karen Kamensek. From November 23, 2019.
A hypnotic, mesmerizing contemporary opera about the revolutionary Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) who tried to establish a monotheistic religion with the sun (Aten) as the sole deity his society should worship. The text is based on ancient sources including decrees and letters from Akhenaten’s rule and a poem by Akhenaten himself, the Hymn to the Aten, from The Egyptian Book of the Dead. This is the last installment in Glass’ “Portrait Trilogy”—a trio of operas based on the lives of important historical figures
Sunday, November 15
Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel – Starring Audrey Luna, Amanda Echalaz, Sally Matthews, Sophie Bevan, Alice Coote, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, Joseph Kaiser, Frédéric Antoun, David Portillo, David Adam Moore, Rod Gilfry, Kevin Burdette, Christian Van Horn, and John Tomlinson, conducted by Thomas Adès. From November 18, 2017.
Thomas Adès collaborated on the libretto with Tom Cairns who directed the Metropolitan Opera production that the composer himself conducted. Based on Luis Buñuel’s 1962 surrealist film by the same name, this nightmarish story takes place at a high-society dinner during which the guests realize that, bizarrely, they cannot exit the mansion. Fun fact: the soprano playing the role of Leticia must sing an A above high C, which Audrey Luna does in this production. This is said to be the highest note ever sung on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
Top Bigstock photo: Monument to composer Tchaikovsky, Klin.
