What's really wrong at the Met?

"The Met : What's really wrong"? a probing analysis by Dawn Fatale (love ya) in parterre box. A whole lot more thoughtful than the typical internet rage that "sounds like  Republicans who argue that food stamp spending can be cut because they read a story on redstate.com about people trading food stamps for alcohol". I can hardly wait for Part Two with ideas on how to get the business model back on track. 

The cultural divide between the US and Europe is so fundamental that there's no point making comparisons. Just praise be that the Royal Opera House runs close to full capacity. Having this morning shelled out big money for Manon Lescaut, I can see the point of flexible pricing structures. There isn't one single, amorphous "audience" out there but many different audiences with different expectations. The secret, I think, is balance. Cut back on big-name stars, and kill the goose that lays golden eggs.  Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel sell because they're good. Placido Domingo sells because he's loved. Non-opera goers will pay big money for someone they've heard of, and why not?  They're entertained and they help keep the house going. Which is what we really want, don't we? OTOH there are some people who'd like to be tricoteuses, getting their kicks from someone's  demise. As I've been saying for years, some like opera as an art form, others as an arena for bloodsports.
 
PS I was amused by the idea in the article about British singers at the Met. We get an unusually high number of American singers in London, some of whom are good enough to compete with the best Europeans, but some who aren't.  After hearing the Met's attempts at Britten, it should be mandatory  to hire conductors who understand the idiom ie not Conlon. But maybe the US isn't ready for the real Britten, with his ironies and contradictions. In  many ways, Britain isn't ready for Britten, either.

Religion vs Religiosity : Wagner Parsifal Met

This production of Wagner's Parsifal, directed by  François Girard, premiered in Lyons last year. The Met, being a far wealthier house, was able to assemble a truly spectacular cast: Jonas Kaufmann, René Pape, Katarina Dalayman, Peter Mattei and Evgeny Nikitin. Success guaranteed, even if the production is European and modern. These performances set new benchmarks. This Parsifal will be the stuff of legend for decades to come.

"Hört ihr den Ruf?". From the moment Pape starts to sing, we realize that this will be no routine Parsifal. Gurnemanz apperars in normal street clothes, so you concentrate on the man he is and what he says, without the filter of fancy dress costume. This makes for an uncommonly direct portrayal.  Pape enunciates the long recitatives with careful deliberation, his phrasing natural, each word measured so its meaning cannot be missed. Like the Wanderer in Siegfried, Gurnemanz knows he cannot change the past, but might glimpse the future. The Knights mock Kundry,  just as she mocked Jesus. Gurnemanz shows her compassion. Pape's voice warms when he addresses her. In the final act, he touches her face with great tenderness: you wonder if there's more to their relationship than Wagner lets on.  A sub-theme of sexual repression runs through the opera. A basic understanding of Wagner's ideas on nature, human and otherwise, should alert us as to what Parsifal might really mean. Fearful of Kundry, the Community blocks out part of the balance so necessary for growth.

This production, directed by François Girard with designs by Michael Levine, interprets Parsifal in connection with the breadth of Wagner's vision infinitely more perceptively. Fundamentally Parsifal isn't "about" Christianity at all, though Christian icons abound. The Knights of the Grail didn't exist, and Klingsor is sheer myth.  The very idea that any one group should "own" the Grail contradicts the very idea of Christianity, where each time Mass is said, communities  all over the world re-enact the Communion and the idea of redemption.  If anything Parsifal is a veiled critique of established religion. Just as Wagner challenges capitalsim in the Ring,  in Parsifal he challenges conventional piety. The Grail Knights hate Klingsor because he uses magic to achieve his aims. Yet they themselves practise superstition. Good Friday commemorates the Crucifixion. It doesn't, of itself, create miracles. The Knights talk the talk, and walk the walk (the processions) but even Gurnemanz can't, at first, understand who Parsifal is and why he seemingly defiles the holy day by turning up in his grubbies.

Religion and religiosity are very different things. Parsifal is more Siegfried than Jesus.  He's a posthumous child whose background is obscure: all we know are his parents' names, although Kundry, like Brünnhilde, may know more than she's letting on.  Like Siegfried, Parsifal  is an innocent unpolluted by the world (another reference to Wagner's Romantic ideas of Nature). But unlike Siegfried, who thinks only of himself and the immediate moment, Parsifal learns through compassion. "Durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Tor", can grow and develop, and become the Saviour releasing Amfortas from his wound.  He regains the Spear that pierced Jesus' body on the Cross. He baptises Kundry, who thus (in this non-misogynistic production) can greet the Grail. Yet hang on!  Jesus was the Son of God: Parsifal is the son of an obscure human being. Imbuing him with semi-divine powers is sacrilege.  And in any case nothing in the Gospels suggests that the spear at the Crucifixion had magic powers. Miracles come from God, if you believe, not from inanimate objects. The Grail Community believes in things but not in the concepts that mark true faith.

Parsifal works as a spiritual experience because the music is sublime. It can detoxify our ears, clearing out the mental muzak that pollutes our normal lives.  The diaphanous textures, and the reverential tempi operate on our psyches, putting us in a kind of zen state where we're receptive to spiritual urges. Parsifal can be soporific in the wrong hands, but let's not forget that the REM state of sleep is physiologically important, connected with dreams, memory and deep refreshment. No wonder Parsifal evokes spiritual feelings even if the narrative is fundamentally non-religious.

With Jonas Kaufmann as Parsifal, one can believe. He sings like a God. In the First Act, Kaufmann has relatively little to sing, because Parsifal is still in embryo, so to speak. Kaufmann's eyes observe everything keenly: he's learning with every moment that passes. Because Siegfried knew no fear, he was easily fooled. Parsifal, on the other hand, is feared by strangers because they can sense instinctively that he has a mind of his own.

In Klingsor's Zauberschloss, Parsifal kills the Flower Maiden's lovers - that's why the scene is awash with blood, as the text makes perfectly clear. Parsifal kills without malice, just as he killed the Swan who led him to the Grail community.  He's still very much on a learning curve.In any case, Blood flows all over this opera. There are so many references to blood, death and birth that it's surprising how restrained this staging really is.

The Flower Maidens in this production are powerfully realized. They are beautiful, but close up we can see they are wearing wigs and have identikit painted masks. The choreography is by Carolyn Choa. The women are grouped in the shape of a lotus, so when they bend and move, they look like a giant lotus opening its petals. Choa choreographed Anthony Minghella's Madama Butterfly. While the use of the colour red also figures, the intention's quite different. The Lotus is a Buddhist symbol of purity, shooting up sullied from the mud beneath a lake. Parsifal, by implication.  The reference is also to the Buddhist way of Compassion Wagner was reading about at the time he was working on Parsifal.  That's yet another reason for not taking the "Christian" aspects of the opera too literally. Parsifal offers Compassion as an alternative to the self-righteous judgementalism of the Grail community. Buddhists don't believe in deities but in concepts of good ethics. Anyone who lives with selfess virtue can attain Boddhisatva. Interestingly, when the Knights of the Grail first gathered in Act One, they, too, formed a circle like a lotus, though it didn't last. A small detail, perhaps, but absolutely relevant.

The scene is nott gory. The floor is covered, but it's shiny like a mirror, reflecting what's above it.  A bed descends on which Kundry attempts to seduce Parsifal  It's pure white, but as Kundry moves about, she stains the sheets red. As the Flower Miadens dance, the water turns their dresses pink, in a parody of girliness. They lean on spears, like pole dancers. They are  mocking the Spear as Kundry mocked Jesus, but also making a statement about the misogyny of the Grail community and of the established Church.

Katarina Dalayman's Kundry is flesh and blood woman in a negligée. Waltraud Meier's wild animal Kundry in the Nicholas Lenhoff production remains a tour de force, defining the role at its most savage.. But Dalayman is right for Girard's humanist Parsifal, and the scene on the bed gives her a chance to show Kundry's quintessential vulnerability.  Dalayman is good, and would shine more had we not been blinded by the glory of Kaufmann's singing.

The Second Act marks  a turning point in Parsifal's journey towards self-knowledge. Just as he is about to succumb to lust, Parsifal thinks of Amfortas's suffering.  With tremendous force, Kaufmann sings "Amfortas! Die Wunde! Die Wunde!", and then with heartfelt agony "Furchtbare Klage!". His voice carries such authority that it seems to obliterate everything around him. His singing is so powerful that quite frankly, it doesn't matter how he  catches the Spear, or how Kundry curses him. He's invincible because he has found his Mission.

Yet Parsifal still has a long way to go before he achieves his destiny. In the Final Act, the Grail Community is falling apart, the Knights scavenging for survival in a  post-apocalyptic wasteland.  The ground is parched and cracked.  Water and blood are fluids, both essential for life. Yet even at this nadir, there is hope. When Pape sings "...der .Lenz ist da!" he prepares the way for Parsifal's  "die Halme, Blüten und Blumen", fresh, open meadows rather than the hothouse flowers of Klingsor's realm. But perhaps it's also an echo of Sieglinde's "Du bist der Lenz". Nonetheless the Grail Community is still so hidebound by pointless rules that even Gurnemanz can't recognize The Spear when Parsifal places it before him.

"Der Irmis und der Leiden Pfade kam ich, soll ich mich denen jetzt entwunden wähnen"  When Kaufmann sings of Parsifal's struggles, his voice expresses genuine anguish. Just as the Spear was once forged in flames, Parsifal has matured through suffering. Amfortas's wound can be healed by the Spear; Parsifal's wounds make him who he is now. He uses the Spear to help others. The Shrine is opened, and it would appear that the Community revives.  Wagner's instructions are that a white dove appears over Parsifal's head. Anyone with a basic grasp of theology recognizes the reference to Jesus. Kaufmann's timbre is so strong and pure that you can suspend belief for an instant.  Superlative performances, too, from Peter Mattei (Amfortas) and Evgeny Nikitin as Klingsor. In any ordinary production, they'd shine. In this luxury cast, there wasn't any weak link. Daniele Gatti's conducting highlighted the drama. I can remember a Bernard Haitink Parsifal where the tempi were so slow that that it would have worked better as audio. Beautiful, but Parsifal is a work for the stage.

Wagner was an artist, and for him, art transcended all else. Parsifal is a miraculous work of art, utterly convincing on its own terms. But it's art, not religion. Wagner adapted Icelandic sagas for the Ring, and medieval legend for Tristan und Isolde. Adapting the Gospels for his own purposes would have been perfectly logical. If anything, Girard's Parsifal makes me appreciate the true spirituality in the opera, rather than the pseudo-Christian mumbo-jumbo.

Met Parsifal rave review

John Yohalem was at the Met's Wagner Parsifal. Here's a link to his review in parterre :
"The assembled folk, male and female still divided, unenlightened, appear for the funeral of Titurel ....Their utter demoralization in this featureless, storm-clouded landscape for once seems proper for their bitter and ungenerous attack on desperate, pain-wracked Amfortas. I’ve always felt, at that point, that the Knights of the Grail, for all their supposed sanctity, sure don’t demonstrate much Christian (or basic) generosity towards a fellow Knight’s suffering—but that may have been exactly Wagner’s point: Dogma without the personal attainment of compassion is never enough. It’s tough to out-think someone who thought as elaborately as Wagner."

So much about the Knights of the Grail contradicts Christianity.  Is Wagner  taking the mickey out of religion just as he contradicts capitalism, paternalism, heroism and so much else in the Ring?  

Taxidermy Tempest - Adès at the Met

What would Robert Lepage make of Thomas Adès's The Tempest ? The Tempest is inherently dramatic, given its Shakespearean origins, and  Adès's music soars to sublime, supernatural heights.  The Met is wealthier than any other house, and Lepage has a penchant for expensive machines..This was an opportunity for the Met to use its resources to craete something truly magical.

Instead it proved to be a grotesque, proving yet again that throwing money at things means nothing if there's no vision behind it.  Imagine a Mies van der Rohe masterpiece with glorious vistas. Then stuff  it full to bursting with discards from a shabby amateur dramatics prop room.

 Lepage's concept is built round a mock-up of the Teatro alla Scala, on the dubious premise that Prospero once lived in Milan. However, La Scala didn't exist in Shakespeare's time. Why are the costumes facsimilies of late 19th century Italian opera?  " Milan" and "Naples" are symbols of temporal  power, rendered impotent.  The Tempest is allegory, not history.  In many ways it  is the most "English" of operas. Furthermore, Shakespeare deliberately locates it on a mythical island in a mythical ocean, where nature spirits operate beyond the confines of civilization.  Central to the plot, and to Adès's music is the cosmic storm.  Adès's music sizzles and spins with supernatural energy. Lepage smothers it in formaldehyde, turning it to taxidermy.
 
The Tempest is Adès's  finest achievement. How could he have countenanced this? He might as well have replaced his music with elevator muzak, for all the relevance this production had to the opera. Lepage has direccted the stage play many times. How could he have misunderstood it so completely? Perhaps he's making a reference to the artficial nature of theatre, which might work with many operas, but not for something as esoteric as The Tempest. One wonders if composer and director were hypnotized by the Met aesthetic of money before taste. Some opera goers could not care less about art, music or drama. Ironically, the same audiences who wail at "Regie" will not notice that Lepage's pointless staging and costumes are the worst form of directoral excess.

Because The Tempest predicates on psychic imbalance and distorted reality, Adès's  music is finely tuned to capture this distorted reality. Cadences rise madly up and down the scale, pitches switch suddenly, key changes occur when you least expect. Adès always conducts his own music better than he conducts any othe composer, so I shut my eyes to concentrate on the orchestra. But listen to the Royal Opera House recording, where he's more spontaneous. At the Met he doesn't take risks, and doesn't fully engage with the wild fantasy.
 
The vocal lines are set counter-intuitively, emphasizing words out of syntax.  Ariel and Caliban have the most difficult music because they are supernatural beings who aren't supposed to function in normal terms. The original Ariel, Cynthia Sieden, was an unusually high coloatura, but she had to train her voice specially to sing the part, and do excercises to recover afterwards, but she sang with a quite incredible beauty, her interpretation informed by her extensive experience in baroque roles, which are full of bizarre characters. Audrey Luna sings, but doesn't create the part. "Full Fathoms Five" drifted past, though it's integral to the plot and Adés writes some of his most glorious music for it. Indeed, the Guardian ignored it altogether. But  heroic efforts would have been in vain in this production. Lepage relies too much on mechanical effects to bother about singing or acting, and most of this cast were too inexperienced to override him.

Simon Keenlyside, however, created the role in the original Royal Opera House production. He relishes its challenges and develops Prospero into a plausible human being. He has the range and the flexibility to cope with the constant convoultions. He conveys genuine emotional depth. All credit to the felt tip pen tattoo artist, but the costume concept made Keenlyside look like a monument defaced by graffiti, rather a telling image for the production as a whole. The original  Caliban was created by  Ian Bostridge, whose unique voice brought out the alien strangeness of Caliban's personality, tragic and demonic by turns, the voice shift shaping almost as much as Ariel's but in a lower register. Caliban is a counterpart to Prospero, even though he doesn't have as much to sing, so it takes a tenor with Bostridge's intuitive feel for the surreal to develop the part for maximum impact. Alan Oke has the notes, but not the craziness, and is no match for Keenlyside, worthy as he is. As Adés said himself:"This Caliban is different".

On the other hand, maybe Met audiences don't want challenge, however integral it is to the drama. Toby Spence impressed, as did Kevin Burdette and Iestyn Davies, but the rest of the cast was hampered by the appalling libretto (Meredith Oakes). Humour certainly has a place in this opera, but this text is just plain daft. In theory, one might create a staging which turned this weakness into a virtue. The libretto can be overcome because Adés's  music ignores it in favour of his own musical waywardness. But it would take a much better director than Lepage to direct singers to sing the spirit of what they are singing rather than  just the words. Good direction is all the more important in a production which relies too much on props and mindless costumes. Adès's The Tempest is a radical but lovely piece of music, but Lepage and the Met have once again denatured art and brought it down to the level of pantomime. It's not strictly their fault aloner, but that of an audience that prefers costumes to creativity.

Divine Levine?

Conductors seem to live forever, like Takashi Asahina who was on the podium til age 93,  In comparison, Levine at 70 is a mere babe. But Levine's return raises many questions. He's an icon because he's been at the Met for more than 40 years. Powerful symbiosis between man and house. Levine's doctors say he's fine to work again so that's good news. Levine's raring to go. "It would be torture for him not to conduct", sources say. Good spirit!  In an era where employers get away with treating employees like disposables, the way the Met has cared for Levine has been almost miraculous.

When Levine returns after three years away the audience reaction will be astonishing. Massive sympathy, massive support. But it is necessarily healthy for music ? Perhaps Levine will pick up again rejuvenated. Star performers are always bankable, because even past their prime, people want to hear them and bask in the memory of glory. Unlike singing, conducting doesn't depend on physical fitness. But it does demand creative prowess. No-one would begrudge Levine a graceful retirement and a gradual return, so maybe he has a long term strategy? Running an opera house that size, with that much influence, means a lot more than more-of-the-same. Does the Met itself have long term vision?  We aren't privy to the internal politics in the Met, but what might be happening behind the scenes? In big organizations, it's rarely up to individuals.

The Levine/Met symbiosis is interesting also because it illustrates the different demography betwen US and European classical music. In Europe, there are many more orchestras, opera houses and conductors in a relatively small space, compared with the US. In Europe, opera going isn't necessarily associated with social status. When there's so much choice, momopoly situations don't happen so easily. And with more choice, more challenge. 

Common sense about the Met's The Enchanted Island

When the Met did The Enchanted Island Martin Bernheimer tore it to shreds, and many others followed (almost word for word). Yet many enjoyed it.  At the cinema I went to, the audience were cheerful even though the opera lasted a long time. What was the fuss about then? Partly, it was the word "pastiche" which means something negative in modern English. So people worry that if they'd had a good time, they'd be showing "bad taste", even the ones who claimed to know pastiche meant something different 300 years ago. But "purist" is a snotty 20th century concept, often employed by people too insecure to let on that they don't know what they're talking about. Real "purists" would have recognized in The Enchanted Island a true example of baroque spirit.

In baroque times, composers churned out dozens of opera to entertain their audiences. No qualms about recycling good ideas. Scores weren't printed, and copying expensive. In any case, audiences liked hearing tunes they recognized. No recordings to freeze productions into fossils. Similarly, audiences had no hang-ups about endlessly rehashed narratives.  Complicated plots weren't a problem for those who read Tasso and Metastasio in the original.

Perfhaps part of the negative reception was that Peter Gelb attracts so much hate that no-one could bring themselves to accept that The Enchanted Island was pretty good. Not genius, but fantastic theatre. Had it been premiered in Europe, it would have been a success (remember the Glyndebourne Purcell The Fairy Queen, (see here), also William Christie and Jeremy Sams? Both of them know their baroque better than average.  This is what I wrote about the Met's The Enchanted Island last January "Met Enchanted Island - deeper than expected".
 
Now here is someone else, a baroque specialist who's seen it and comments positively too. He also dismisses the idea that hiding the list of items was a kind of conspiracy, as some suggested. Some who know the original works the bits came from recognized them anyway. The writer also praises the stagecraft which was amazing - exactly in the true spirit of baroque extravagance. How could anyone miss Placido coming out of the sky? Or that boat, flying in from the wings? Live, it must have been so over the top!  True baroque spectacle. Now THAT was a proper use of the Met's thing for expensive machinery and extravagant display. (though in fact it was cleverly done rather than gargantuan).

Here's the link: to Joel Cohen's article in the Boston Musical Intelligencer, and thanks to whoever sent it to Norman Lebrecht. 

The Enchanted Island at the Met - deeper than expected

Extravagance is the essence of baroque, but few houses can do spectacles as well as the Met. So when the  Met throws its might behind The Enchanted Island, it can create a spectacle worthy of the genre. At last Met technology put to good use - this is baroque as it should be done! William Christie is one of the great baroque specialists, and a guiding force behind Purcell The Fairy Queen at Glyndebourne in 2009. That may have been part of the inspiration for The Enchanted Island, for both take material from various sources and present them as glorious extravaganza. Christie and the Met also use some of the finest singers in the genre.
 
Perhaps the idea that The Enchanted Island is a "new" opera panics people. But why not? "Pastiche" carries negative connotations now, but didn't in baroque times when recycling was part of what went into theatre. Recordings didn't exist then, so composers were expected to re-use popular melodies so people could enjoy them again. That's also partly why baroque operas adapt similar ideas over and over. Audiences delighted in new ways of hearing old. How many of Vivaldi's operas were all "new" or even all Vivaldi? And how many adaptations of Ariosto and Tasso? The baroque aesthetic blended characters  from ancient antiquity and medieval myth in joyous riot. Even Mozart had no qualms about recycling a good tune. So snobbery about this kind of pastiche is misguided. Indeed, I suspect the choices made in The Enchanted Island are wittier than might be expected.

The secret to The Enchanted Island is to take the story as it comes,  just as baroque audiences would have done centuries ago. The basic premise is that Prospero has usurped Sycorax on her island, and pushes his weight around. That's why Shakespeare's The Tempest gets banned in Arizona. It's a simile for what happens when indigenous people are colonized by masters from over the seas. Caliban has long been seen as a metaphor for the Third World.  Perhaps Shakespeare wasn't political, but there's no reason why a reworking of the premise shouldn't tease out new meaning from an old story. Handel did it all the time, as did many others. William Christie and Jeremy Sams emphasize the anarchy inherent in the plot. Please read what Sams wrote for the British press here.

Prospero (David Daniels) rules the island but Sycorax (Joyce DiDonato) this time fights back, by simply changing dragon's blood for lizard's blood  in the spell Prospero sets for getting off the island.  Immediately, we know that this retelling of the basic story will be mischief!  So Ariel (Danielle de Niese) conjures up a boat. It's the first of many visual special effects which baroque audiences would have gasped at in admiration. Only it's the wrong boat! It's carrying the lovers from A Midsummers Nights Dream, who've already been cast in several guises before. Ariel connects to Puck, Caliban (Luca Pisaroni) to Bottom. Fun is of the essence. More fool those who can't see the humour in The Enchanted Island. In the cinema where I saw it, the audience was chuckling with delight.

Exceptionally good performances from Joyce DiDonato (Sycorax) and Luca Pisaroni (Caliban). DiDonato pretty much creates the part on her own, since it's hardly developed elsewhere, but fundamental to the background of the story. DiDonato is magnificent. Her singing ranges from ethereally high textures to animal-like growls. She's a nature spirit, connected to the mysteries in the jungles of her island. She's also an earth mother who loves her son just as much as Prospero loves Admir'd Miranda (Lisette Oropesa, singing in American). Caliban (Luca Pisaroni) is costumed as half gorilla, but with a sensitive side, (he likes flowers). Pisaroni is a natural actor, moving half crouched and intuitively, like an animal, yet his voice expresses deep emotional feelings.  In The Tempest, Prospero holds all the cards. In The Enchanted Island, the underdogs Sycorax and Caliban get a fair chance. This time, they're evenly balanced, and the meaning of the plot enhanced. Incidentally, the plot is driven by pe-existing baroque materials - nothing 21st century added. Sorceresses on enchanted islands abound throughout the genre.

Then, one of the most magnificent coups de théâtre in recent memory. Ariel calls on the God Neptune nd suddenly he arises from the ocean, surrounded by four mermaids, suspended from the roof. It's an image straight out of baroque fantasy, the sort of scene baroque artists used to paint, except this time it's done with modern stage techniques baroque stage designers could only dream of. It's fantastic in the true, baroque meaning of the word, totally artificial and gloriously splendid at the same time. Some of the chorus fill the foreground, others as singing heads in a backdrop that could come right out of an 18th century painted flat.    Since when did Gods rise up out of the sea, except in the imagination? And part of the baroque aesthetic is to push the boundaries of imagination. Only a house like the Met can pull scenes like this off so well.

This magnificent scene must have been stunning live, given the gasps from the audience, on screen and in the cinema. But it's absolutely fundamental to the whole concept of the plot. Neptune is the Deus ex machina around whom the resolution pivots. What a wonderful way to make the most of Placido Domingo!  He doesn't have to sing much (thankfully) but his acting skills are superb. Again, the anarchic humour in the text. "I'm old, irritable and tired", he sings with a merry grin, "I don't do the high seas". Pun, pun, pun for those who forget he used to be a tenor. It's a measure of Domingo's greatness that he can do acidly witty self parody like this, upstaging the elaborate ostentation around him.

The scene where Pisaroni as Caliban is surrounded by dancers isn't there merely to squeeze in a bit of Rameau but to show how he's "enchanted" by nature spirits half-animal, half-human like himself.  It's crucial to the plot because Caliban is trying his hand at magic spells and conjuring a new world, unintended,  where things will be more in tune with nature. It won't happen, though, as Prospero won't let it. The proscenuim, which magically transforms throught the evening from dense jungle to baroque fanatsy now turns dark, two glowing orbs like the eyes of a wild animal, the stage like a gigantic mouth swallowing Caliban's dreams. It's time now for Neptune to restore the natural order.  In another spectacular scene, Domingo as Neptune conjures up another magnificent boat, complete with the sort of rolling "waves" baroque designers made out of painted horizontal sheets, shaken up and down. At once "traditional" baroque design, with modern technology. At last Ferdinand (Anthony Roth Costanzo) appears. Miranda is saved, and Prospero returned to where he belongs. "Forgive me" he begs Sycorax, and maybe he means it, but our sympathies are with DiDonato's wonderful characterization. But baroque means happy ending, so all join in in standard ensemble, praising new beginnings. Excellent ideas, excellent cast and the Met Orchestra playing idiomatically even though they're using modern instruments (plus harpsichord). The Enchanted Island shows that the Met has huge potential.  Had this piece been heard at Glyndebourne, where audiences are receptive to baroque and to innovation, it would have been greeted with the acclaim that The Fairy Queen received. (read more here)  


And HERE is a link to my most recent post which has another link to something even better.