playing catch-up
i was asked several months ago to write reviews about the operas i would be seeing once i moved to the fancy schmancy big apple. now, knowing me, i thought i wouldn’t be spending too much time at Lincoln Center. boy was i wrong.
so in the six or so months that i’ve lived in New York, I’ve attended a handful of performances including Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, John Adams’s Nixon in China and Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride. and it doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon. but attending these performances has done more than make me get out of the house. it has forced me to change my personal view about and relationship to opera. and being the creature of habit that i am, i have to write about it.
hopefully, this will give me some insight into why i am, personally, so transfixed by opera. and of course i have other reasons. i write about opera. a lot. (basically every major paper written during my Master’s degree was about opera) and my PhD dissertation focuses on opera on more than just a musical level. this is a place to work out some of those thoughts that are so incredibly specific.
and yes, i want to brag. there, i said it.
so what’s coming up next? Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Morton Feldman’s Neither at City Opera and Berg’s Wozzeck at the Met. also some thoughts on gendered operatic madness in Lucia di Lammermoor and Peter Grimes. oh yeah, it’s gonna be fun.
POSTSCRIPT: how could i have forgotten? i will 100% be at the Figaro Project Contemporary Opera Trio premiere in Baltimore in a few weeks. for those who are not familiar, The Figaro Project is a wonderful opera startup with which i had the great pleasure of being associated during my time at Peabody. they commissioned three 40-minute operas from local composers and i can’t wait to see the productions. for more info, check out The Figaro Project at thefigaroproject.com.
what's opera, doc? 