Dialogues des Carmelites: il ne reste que l'Agneau de Dieu

I went to the last performance (of only three!) of the run of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites which closed out the Met's season. The production and orchestra were solid, but it was the vocal performances that gave the evening its intellectual and emotional intensity. John Dexter's classic production is strong and stark, though it's hard for me to put myself in the place of audiences who saw it as revolutionary. Before the opening bars of the score are heard, we see the nuns all prostrate in the cruciform position. The grille, the rood screen, the prison bars all descend, making effective minimalist surroundings for naturalistic presentation. I quite liked the airy form of the grille, the incorporation of the cross into its pattern, emphasizing the voluntary rather than the absolute nature of the nuns' enclosure. The stage is marked--defined--by an ever-present cross. Its shape is obscured only at a handful of moments: it is in shadow while Blanche is in her father's house, cut off by the library with its Fragonard-like painting. Again it is partially hidden during the prioress' death scene, though she is in its light. During the martyrdom, the crowds mill in the transept, blind to it. I really liked this use of space suggesting the form of grace, the force of it even (especially?) in the mundane.

Io spero ancora: La Bohème charms again

Cafe scene from Act II, Susanna Phillips as Musetta (c) Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Despite disappointment at last year's La Bohème, I went again on Tuesday, and I'm glad I did. My own enjoyment of the evening was augmented considerably by the fact that I was there in the company of a friend for whom this was her first opera. She loved it, and having someone to comment in the intervals on how impressive the street scene was, or how beautiful the lovers' reconciliation under the snow, helped me appreciate it as well. The "business" in Franco Zeffirelli's apparently deathless production seemed less fussy to me this year, too. Louis Langrée led the orchestra in a beautifully sensitive reading of the score, with nice shaping of phrases and real delicacy of touch. I was happy to hear the music receive the attention to detail I think it deserves (I still await a performance of Bohème where I actually hear the final chords of each act.) The quality of the vocal performances ranged from respectable to excellent; the latter adjective is awarded, not lightly, to Hei-Kyung Hong's deeply-felt Mimi.

Cara ed amabile

I should be hoarding my stipend and beefing up lecture notes in these last weeks of summer... but the Mostly Mozart festival has begun, and I could not resist its siren call!  As always in the wake of these reckless concert-related decisions, I'm inexpressibly glad I went; surely lecture notes will be the better for my brain and heart having absorbed some Mozart beforehand?   The program notes were unusually lively, as well as informative, maybe stretching a little too far in its attempts to convince us that all the evening's music shared a uniting theme both natural and profound, but still good.  Jane Moss, the festival's director, claims in the program booklet that it is hard to imagine "a more sublime and rewarding way to experience summer in New York than celebrating the genius and inspiration of Mozart," a sentiment which, while perhaps overly fulsome, I find hard to argue with.