| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 2-May-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Götterdämmerung at the Met |
 The word Götterdämmerung contextually translated becomes “twilight of the gods”, and Thursday night’s story was indeed full of endings: the conclusion of the saga of the ring and the end of several lives, human and god alike.
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| 29-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Flashes of brilliance in the Met's Siegfried |
 Each of Wagner's Ring Cycle operas offers conductor and performers a continual stream of opportunities for "wow" moments. There are moments of humour, bars of intense power in the music, crises in the drama or passages of intense vocal lyricism - there are so many possibilities that it's impossible for any one performance to capture them all. One way of evaluating a Ring Cycle opera is to consider how many of these fleeting instances were seized upon by orchestra and cast with enough impact to make a lasting impression in your memory.
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| 26-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Die Walküre at the Met |
 You can summarise the plot of Die Walküre in three sentences: Siegmund and Sieglinde fall in love and elope; Fricka coerces Wotan into killing Siegmund; Wotan punishes Brünnhilde for trying to save him. But within that simple framework lies a vast gamut of human distress, striving, redemption - and, make no mistake, Wotan may be notionally a god, but Norse gods are made in man’s image: extensions of humanity rather than abstract spirits.
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| 15-Feb-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The music redeems unanswered questions in the Met's beautiful new Parsifal |
 Before the music in the Metropolitan Opera’s new Parsifal starts, a black but reflective curtain drapes the front of the stage. It is dim enough not quite to show the audience, but it picks out the chandeliers. As Daniele Gatti coaxes the orchestra through the opening lines of the score the tableau becomes translucent, first seeming to mirror the front rows of the stalls, but slowly revealing the chorus, sitting in rows. Parsifal stands, in the centre, chosen. The men slowly remove their workaday suits, socks, and shoes, while the women turn.Read full review... | |
