Met flex

A heady time for opera stoners these past few days, with the Met opening up single tickets to subscribers last Thursday and to the general public this coming Monday. Sieglinde chose to cut the line this year and put together a so-called "flex" subscription consisting of at least six operas. What's odd is that they have to be different operas. Someone please explain to me why I can't be a "flex" subscriber just by opting to go to each of the six performances of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Why are they discriminating against us? And who has this idea of going to just one evening of a work you absolutely can't live without? Who does that? The Met should be staffed with more opera fans.

So yes, the issue occupying our recent meditations was to choose six. Splendidly, this coming season is actually more thrilling than the last, which featured only Tannhäuser and La Forza del Destino amidst a bunch of reruns and B-sides. This season, we finally have the FroSch revival we've all been waiting for, and this spectacle alone surpasses many recent seasons. And with the astonishing Elza van den Heever as the Empress! We are complete. (Sieglinde will speak more about her eternal love affair with this opera later on.) So which five did she lump with FroSch to make a "flex"? Well, Salome, of course, again with dear Elza. Fidelio also makes the list, with the terrifying giant Lise Davidsen easing into her fated fach and the ageless René Pape whom we haven't seen at the Met since 2021. Tosca isn't normally a contender but this time, since La Davidsen is getting her Italian itch scratched before she unleashes her entire soul in Wagner, why not catch a couple of those too? I am genuinely curious about Aidanamar and Antony & Cleopatra, so there you have it, ostensibly Sieglinde's six-evening season. Shortly after "flexing", we dived back into the Met website to hoard multiple tickets to FroSch, Salome, and Fidelio--which, if you were paying attention, was the entire point of this charade.

We will go to other evenings, but those will be on a case by case basis and depend on many boring factors (work, life, meds, etc.). Plus, Sieglinde will travel for opera! She's been doing that the past couple of years, and will get to recount the blow-by-blow here in Her Diaries ... eventually.