Was Leonard Pinth-Garnell the Master of Ceremonies?
Posted on 09/22/2009 7:49:40 AM PDT by Captain Jack Aubrey
The Met opened its season on Monday night with a new production of Puccini’s “Tosca” by the adventurous Swiss-born director Luc Bondy. When Mr. Bondy and the production team appeared on stage during curtain calls, the audience erupted in boos. If there were cheers among the jeers, they were drowned out.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hardcore opera fans tend to be very picky and demanding. It doesn’t take much to turn them into hooligans.
Almost no one arrives late at the Met. If you're not there at Post Time, they don't let you in until intermission or a scenery change break.
ML/NJ
Leni
well i hate the jived up junk...and dont consider it opera.
Houston was like that, too. I was with a friend who has Chronic Lateness, and we had to watch the first act of “Turandot” on a monitor in the lobby.
However, during Wagner’s lifetime, the Parisian upper crust would arrive at the opera late - or so my dear old professor said, and he was nearly old enough to have been there!
Hard to screw up Tosca, but they managed. The description of the sets sounds more like Kafka than Puccini. I don’t blame the audience. I know how they feel. I have seen Viaggio a Reims in a 1950s setting, and PBS broadcast a Rigoletto several years ago that featured topless women dancing around the Duke of Mantua. Nasty.
ML/NJ
My mother was a close friend of the family. I saw the entire Ring at Bayreuth when I was 14. The staging was extraordinary, and even years ago was avant-garde by U.S. standard, but really worked.
re Tosca, Peter Gelb is the former headof Sony Classical, has no experience with opera performance, and no business being there.
The Wagner operas are so long, I don’t know if I’d make it through a complete one live, especially “Parsifal.” Fortunately, with recorded performances, we don’t have to take it in one sitting!
In any case, why shouldn't people boo if they didn't like a production? It's tradition. And it's not like the back-benchers rushing the stage and assaulting the tenor for botching his job like they do in Italy.
There is a centuries long tradition of booing at operas, tenors in particular. And laughing at fat sopranos during certain scenes in “La Boheme”.
In Parma a good put down of a singer yelled from the audience would make it into the papers and would make you a household name until the next opera fan fired off the next good one.
It is one of my dreams to spend a month in Italy spending the days eating pasta and the nights attending operas. A week in Parma would be good.
Sounds like a dream vacation.
I have boo’d at bastardized operas here in Los Angeles.
I BOO’D THE “PARSIFAL” THEY DID HERE IN 2005, AND WHEN THE LA TIMES GAVE IT A GOOD REVIEW, I WENT BALLISTIC IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE CALENDAR SECTION. (TO MY GREAT SURPRISE, THEY PRINTED IT.)
Some of the productions here at the LA Opera have been simply horrible; ultimately, we let our subscription lapse.
Yet “non ho amato mai tanto la vida.”
Are you guys in Chicago responsible for that too! I don't remember if the Met is doing DA this year but they did it last year. I listened to it for about four minutes.
I have a general rule not to attend any performance unless the composer has been dead for a hundred years or so. It's not that I deny the possibility of something good being composed today, but the filter of time has a way of getting rid of the DAs.
ML/NJ
My mother, sister, and I went to see a production of Cats on Broadway. Horrible. I knew it was a mistake to go to an afternoon production, but we couldn't make the evening show. Second rate signing, second rate acting. Ugh.
Saturday evening performances are the best, always.
Opera, musical theater, symphonies, are meant to captivate and move the spirit, encapsulating you for a brief period of time in a unique and adsorbing experience.
When you start thinking about your "to do" list or checking your watch, the production has failed. It's like paying for a rental car that stalls every time you come to a red light.
By the end of the ride, most folks would be furious, too.
If I remember correctly, it’s San Fransisco that inflicted that opera on the rest of us.
Have you ever seen “Nixon in China”? Houston Opera was running that the same season with the “Turandot” I saw, but I couldn’t get off work (to drive to Houston from San Antonio).
From the description of the production, this production seems to have been a thorough hack job.
I would have booed too. It sounds awful.
Was Leonard Pinth-Garnell the Master of Ceremonies?
No. It's not for me. (I've hears snippets. And it would violate my dead composer rule.)
ML/NJ
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