News from the right coast

I know that quite a few of you travel to New York where you attend opera at the Met and lots more of you attend the high-def screenings of Met operas on a Saturday morning or listen to the weekly radio broadcasts. You may all wish to bookmark this page which provides details of the Met's 2010/2011 season.

A number of the productions are of particular interest to me. The first thing that struck me is that after 24 years they are finally getting around to mounting a production of John Adams's Nixon in China. The direction will be by Peter Sellars who was responsible for the original production (and much else by Adams). This is Sellars' directorial debut at the Met. I am wondering whether the role of Nixon has yet been cast. I know I can hardly be thought of as objective in this regard, but I cannot imagine why the Met would look any further than our old friend Robert Orth. Bob has become the definitive Nixon - the hunched shoulders, raised chin and other body mannerisms just perfectly calculated to fall short of parody, and an ability somehow to make this a sympathetic role.

Bartlett Sher is to direct Le Comte Ory. I have never seen this opera, not have I heard it in its entirety but it's by Rossini so there is a better than evens chance I shall love it. I do know that when Rossini wrote this work a substantial chunk of the music had already been heard in Il Viaggio a Reims, which he had written three years earlier. You may remember seeing that particular opera here in Portland about five years ago. (It was particularly notable for an aria sung by a woman whose valise had gone astray on the journey, an aria which became known in known in Portland Opera circles as 'Dude, where's my luggage?'.) Le Comte Ory is the third opera to be directed at the Met by Bart Sher, the previous two being Il Barbiere di Seviglia and Les Conte d'Hoffmann, both of which I enjoyed very much. The title role is to be sung by Peruvian bel canto phenom Jan Diego Flórez.

The Met's new staging of Die Walküre will star Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde and hunkentenor Jonas Kaufmann in the role of Siegmund - a first for both of them at the Met. The picture above is of Kaufmann. Yes, I know he looks like Euro-trash but he really does have an extraordinary voice. Bryn Terfel will sing the role of Wotan (if he shows up, that is).

Maestro James Levine will celebrate his fortieth anniversary conducting the Met pit band.

The roster of high definition transmissions includes both Rheingold and Walkure from the Ring Cycle but, inexplicable, omits Nixon in China, arguable the most popular American opera of the last fifty years.

All in all it looks like a good season in New York.

I know we haven't had Spring yet but...

I could not resist showing you this video clip of the theme from the movie A Summer Place in an iteration being played by the Percy Faith Orchestra in 1960. It is mainly notable for the fact that the orchestra is composed entirely by old boring white guys, every one of whom looks as though he has been given way too much Xanax. Wow, watch the drummer really rock out at the 40" mark!