Looking ahead… and ahead again.

I should quickly tell you that there is one thing that will always put me into the opera house – contemporary opera. Even if it wasn’t successful (The First Emperor) or not very innovative (An American Tragedy), it is still critical to the opera world that it keeps on commissioning and producing these operas.

On that line of thought, I was SO excited to catch this bit of news. I have been jealously awaiting the arrival of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic at the Met. There are two bits of good news finally. The opera is officially scheduled for next season (2008)! And, it’s going to be a new production. I had heard that the premiere production in San Francisco had been less than satisfactory even though the music was fantastic.

I hope *this* turns out to be a 2 million dollar production. First Emperor, ahem.

Just as cool, but a little farther down the road, is the commission of a Osvaldo Golijov: my latest, favorite contemporary composer. This is the composer who wrote the wildly popular “Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind” (a klezmer piece for clarinet and string quartet) and as well as the Latin American-influenced “Pasión según San Marcos”. Whatever he comes up with for the Met, I’m sure it will be the most musically eclectic opera ever performed at the Met. Too bad we have to wait to the 2011-2012 season. I might not be in New York by then. But what are planes for anyway?

 

Villazon’s Cancellation Mixes Things Up

I’ve been too busy lately and hadn’t even realized that this is OLD news. Like a month old. Still, it’s my turn to pass on some thoughts.

The officially released news states that due to illness, Rolando Villazon will be canceling the next couple months of performances. This is, of course, a slight blow to the Met since they’ve been advertising the Villazon/Netrebko package ever since I can remember going to the Met. However, I must say that the replacements intrigue me quite a bit – although both were already scheduled in other operas.

Joseph Kaiser was going to make his Met debut in the Magic Flute in November 13th. Now he’ll be coming about month earlier to take the October performances of Romeo and Juliette. The opera blogosphere, in general, seems to be very supportive of him, although I had to chuckle when I found out he was not one of the winners of the Met’s National Council Auditions in 2005 (I wonder where the winners are now?). But since then, he’s apparently worked himself up the ladder to become of the promising new young tenors. I’ll be looking forward to hearing him.

Despite all attempts to forget, Roberto Alagna will forever be associated getting booed out of La Scala last year – at least in my mind. He’ll be replacing Villazon in the September performances and then moving on to star in Madama Butterfly in October at the Met.