Rejoice! Old school opera is alive and well at the Met : The Enchanted Island steampunks it’s way onto the stage as of New Year’s Eve. The pastiche , a smorgasbord of little known baroque touchstones comes to The Metropolitan Opera at the behest of Mr. Gelb, General Manager extraordinaire. Countertenors, old fashioned hand-painted scenery, lush (really, really lush) costumes and a plot to boggle the mind bring a joyous experience that is basically opera 101 taken into 2012. It’s a brave new world out there with that projection screen that has come to roost at Center Stage, as an oft-seen element of design in many of the new productions this season. In Enchanted Island, the back screen is one delightful ingredient in indulgence. The characters stem from a long line of Shakespearean extempores: Prospero, Caliban, Ariel, to name a few. With a slick underplot from the Tempest, and an overt soap opera storyline from Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, the basics are a complicated commedia dellarte. Ariel takes some hints from Mickey Rooney in her/his spritely carryings- on throughout the drama, as the comic relief at every turn. Prospero is the manipulative lord of all he surveys , complete with 18th Century Court dress and appropriate haughty attitude. Sycorax, and her son, Caliban, as cast aways to the nether side of this Gilligan’s Island to a realm of twisted tree limbs and strange creatures.
Posts Tagged ‘opera’
Steampunk Opera
Roberto Alagna’s Shoes; An Interview at the Met
Backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House, Roberto Alagna has just finished with one of his many extemporare appearances: signing DVDs of Carmen in the Met Opera Shop. It’s mid-afternoon, and the remarkable singer gives this reporter a moment of his time. We’ve included his lyric pattern of speech, because in English, it flows more so with the original wording and phraseology.