Bits

The Met’s avant garde may have stepped over the proverbial “good taste” line based on early reports from the Met’s Premiere of Puccini’s revamped and updated “Tosca.” On two occasions the antics of the director were the subject of public comment on the nationally syndicated Laura Ingrham radio talk show. The attending audience saw for itself what the fuss was all about when at the end of the opening night performance, the audience both inside and outside the theater applauded the performers but booed Swiss director Luc Bondy’s modernistic version of this Puccini’s favorite. Many shouted their disapproval as they passed through the lobby and onto the plaza complaining that there was no reason to scrap Franco Zeffirelli’s lavish and eye-popping vision and sets. Also booed were the set and costume designer and lighting director. Sources tell us that the fondling of a statute of the Virgin Mary at the end of the first act (which was changed from a simulated sex act with the statute) caused pre-show friction among cast members who were said to be quietly seething over liberties taken both with the opera and the disrespect of the image of the Virgin Mary.

The Met isn’t the only American company that has gone "ga-ga" over European directors and their bizarre ego-feeding antics with opera and its performers. Nor is this the first time we here at OperaOnline.us have commented on the dubious trend. See our previous Commentary “Peter Sellars’ Ego Trip” (Archives, Commentary). We also hear that Los Angeles Opera is facing financial stress because of a $30 million hole they dug for themselves and investors when they staged what has generally been described as director Achim Freyer’s “euro-trashing” of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle.” Here, too, sources tell OperaOnline.us that some performers actually wanted to walk out on the production altogether because of the silly and dehumanizing costumes they were asked to wear. Critics, tied to the company, loved what they saw; the audience, however, in comments attached to the reviews, seemed to universally complain that the production was ruining the show.

Major opera companies seem infatuated with pressing the edges of the envelope by investing in bad productions of successful operas. New operas suffer the same “blind obeisance” to directorial abuse. The Met’s disastrous “First Emperor,” which was universally trashed for its irredeemably bad score is just one other example. Worse, after universal criticism for its non-melodic romp, the Met didn’t make changes. As for “Tosca,” the company’s general director, Peter Gelb, seemingly oblivious to audience reaction which shocked the show's stars, spoke with a reporter for New York Entertainment and boasted that the company’s run of “Tosca” was sold out, so things couldn’t be that bad. “[A]fter 25 years of the old Tosca,” he said, “in order for this theater to continue to stay vital, we must move forward by offering new productions that will stimulate our imagination and that will demonstrate that our art form is not locked in the past.”

Yes, but that was before the audience got a chance to see what Bondy hadid. How many of the “sold out” tickets would be returned if the audience knew what they know now?

The Lyric Opera House and Opera New Jersey are pleased to release final details about the production of Carmen starring Denyce Graves. This fully-staged and costumed opera will bring world-class talent to the Lyric Opera House in Baltimore on February 14th at 3 P.M.

Sung in the original French with English supertitles, this production of Georges Bizet’s most beloved opera is conceptualized and directed by world-renowned stage director, Bernard Uzan. Joining Ms. Graves on stage will be Metropolitan Opera tenor Richard Leech as Don José, and baritone Luis Ledesma as the dashing toreador Escamillo. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the former BOC Chorus, James Harp, Chorus Master will be under the baton of maestro Joseph Rescigno.

“Our patrons have let us know that the tragic loss of Baltimore Opera has left them with an unfulfilled cultural need,” said Sandy Richmond, President and Executive Director of the Lyric Opera House. “We knew the benchmark for quality had been set, so we are very pleased to be able to offer world-class operatic talent again in Baltimore. James Harp, Director of Opera and Education for the Lyric, adds, “We are especially pleased to be able to present the former BOC chorus for this production of Carmen, as well as two opera professionals with a long-standing reputation for quality in Baltimore: Stage Director Bernard Uzan, who has staged many works on the Lyric Stage, and Conductor Joseph Rescigno, whose Baltimore performances go back three decades. Carmen will be the first of many future grand opera presentations in the Lyric that will bring together artists and artisans from Baltimore and beyond. Opera lovers may be assured that many people and organizations, both local and national, are working together to revive operatic activity in Baltimore so we can again enjoy full seasons of high quality grand opera.”

Opera New Jersey is the Garden State’s largest opera company and enters its 8th season producing a summer opera season in Princeton, NJ and 5th winter season producing opera on stages across the State, and this year in Baltimore.

Two North Carolina opera companies announced in November that they will merge into one Raleigh-based company in the hopes of saving money and producing more operas. The Opera Company of North Carolina and Capital Opera Raleigh will combine and be called North Carolina Opera. “This move will be beneficial to both companies in terms of economies of scale, but more importantly, it will benefit the community," OCNC Board Chair Florence Peacock said in a statement. "We will be able to produce more opera, do it better, and do it more often than ever before.”

After spending $32 million to stage its spectacularly unpopular "Ring Cycle," Los Angeles Opera finds itself in deep financial water, unable to pay its debts and maintain its letter of credit without a loan in the form of a bond offering from the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors. LA has raised $30 million from private donors but the payback is spread out over three years, leaving the company shy of money it needs to continue its current operation. The company has cut administrative and operating costs by 20 percent each, but even these cuts were not enough to cover its prior operating deficits and current debts. The loan of $14 million is expected to assist the Music Center which receives $1.4 million a year from LA Opera for its performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. LA's COO Stephen Rountree is certain the loan will be paid back and believes that the Ring Cycle, scheduled for May, will not lose money but break even, a view not shared by all staffers. DEVELOPING. . . OperaOnline.us will offer a Commentary on this development shortly.

"Opera is a tremendously expensive art form; tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars go to creating the average new production. Creativity too often is equated with the bizarre: the kinds of weird excesses that have led Americans to brand much operatic direction on the Continent as "Eurotrash."