Death Clown for Cutie (Cav and Pag at the Met)

 Men are sensitive and easily injured souls, as ten minutes in any internet comment section would tell you. Such is also the gist of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, the august double bill of verismo which presents us twice with the even more august situation of baritones interfering with soprano-tenor relationships and it all getting very bloody. In the Met’s new production, Fabio Luisi makes these high octane scores sound quite classy, but otherwise the two diverge: a dreary, clunky Cav is followed by a fun and punchy Pag. Oh, one other thing in common: for better and for worse, Marcelo Alvarez is the tenor. I shouldn’t be putting that last, which might give you an idea of what is going on here.
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Upcoming Events

Obligatory Don Carlo photo

Hi everyone! I have been buried in work recently but I promise I have not been skipping lots of opera in Philadelphia. Philadelphia simply hasn’t been providing much opera.

That being said, when it rains it pours. In the next few weeks everyone has new productions:

Upcoming Opera in Philadelphia:

  • Don Carlo at Opera Philadelphia, April 24-May 3: this production has a really great cast (including Leah Crocetto, Michelle DeYoung, and Eric Owens) and I am looking forward to it a lot!
  • Faust at AVA, April 25-May 5: I will probably skip this because I can do without this opera even when I’m not busy. 
  • Bernstein’s Mass with the Philadelphia Orchestra, April 30-May 3: OK, it’s not an opera,
    but it has a lot of singing and is directed by Kevin Newbury, conducted
    by YNS. Strangely, the singers are still TBA.
  • The Rake’s Progress at Curtis: May 7-10: Going to Curtis Opera Theater is never, ever a bad decision.

Opera Philadelphia has also announced their 2015-16 season and it’s a good one, including Traviata with the excellent Lisette Oropesa and the local premiere of Cold Mountain by Jennifer Higdon.

I will not, however, be there! I had a great year in Philly (I didn’t go to as many concerts as I would have liked but this was what I expected) but I am moving elsewhere for the fall, because I am an early career academic and this is how it works. I will tell you about that sometime later but for now if you are an opera person in Boston and can tell me about what is happening there please do!

But before that I will be going to Europe this summer, where I will be going to some conferences, seeing the Ring in Bayreuth, going to the Bregenzer Festspiele for the first time, and probably some other things, which are, like the singers in Philadelphia’s Bernstein Mass, TBA.

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Norman Lebrecht to host Fox News show

Confidential sources tell us that, following the blazing success of Piers Morgan, British import Norman Lebrecht will be joining Fox News. The British novelist, blogger, and Google Alert adept will host a weeknight talk show entitled “Norman Baits.”

“Lebrecht will bring a fine appreciation of fine culture to our viewers,” said Fox News chief Roger Ailes. “He just told me about this Mahler guy! I’m having all our shows open with different sections of the Symphony No. 5 starting next week!”

Lebrecht’s show will consist of several regular features, among them “Classical Music Death Watch [People],” “Classical Music Death Watch [Institutions],” “Nazi Watch,” and “Totally Not Disingenuous Segments About Hot Women (Not) in the Wiener Philharmoniker.”

The second half of the program will consist of interviews with a guest panel. Planned guests include Jackie Evancho, Heather MacDonald, Alexander Pereira, Rufus Wainwright, Lorin Maazel, Alan Gordon, and lots of people from Opera-L. While many of these guests will be new faces for Fox News audiences, we are assured that they will make for a fresh and lively debate.

One roadblock has already been surmounted: Lebrecht’s chosen genre of classical has tested poorly with audiences. Thus all musical examples will be replaced by covers of the same repertoire performed by Kid Rock. This will also increase Kid Rock’s audience by 1000%, a goal which has apparently been on the Fox News agenda for some time.

The set of Lebrecht’s show will reportedly resemble a large study. It will be full of LPs (“but not new ones”), books (rumor has it that many copies of his book Maestros, Mysteries, and Madness languish unsold due to legal action), cigars, and his priceless collection of great conductors’ spitoons.

Reports that Lebrecht’s show has been underwritten by the Koch brothers could not be confirmed at press time.

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