Amidst an intercontinental encore competition between La Scala and OONY at Carnegie Hall, the Met should get in the game and perhaps force Angela Gheorghiu to bis her opening aria "Come in quest'ora bruna," but slower and with more open-air sweep. Why does she like to rush things, I'd really like to know. To get paid quicker? (And don't tell me that Gheorghiu is breath-challenged: elsewhere in the opera, she displays master command of her sound during score-enforced long phrases, from the top of the breath to the bottom.)Meanwhile: enough of the wet and the cold. I'm flying to Florida in order to catch the simulcast of Eugene Onegin this weekend at a proper venue: a shiny exurban mall with a full-service Dairy Queen at the food court.
Addendum: There's a charming opera-l post by Marco Daverio about the La Scala event. He says most convincingly:
If now I ask you which was the best moment in La Scala or Met history to deserve a bis everybody will give a different answer. Well... it happened on a silly aria in a silly opera of a silly role. So what...? For the rest Florez sung even better. The aria in act two was a masterpiece.