Breaking news: Verdi and Wagner Make it to History's Most Pompous Top 10 List

The New York Times' Anthony Tommasini argues for their inclusion in his own most exclusive list of "The 10 Greatest Composers of Classical Music", otherwise known as "The Most Predictable Top 10 List Out There, Really".

Real Housewife of UWS

We have something spontaneous (for lunch), something small. Dinner is the big meal. I love to eat, but no way am I going to do a diet; forget it! I just am careful about how much I eat. Sure, I would like to lose a few kilos, but I don’t want to be skinny. You see these skinny, starving women always with the unhappy faces! In my profession, you need the big lungs; my upper body is one or two sizes bigger than my bottom half.

Elsewhere, Anna Netrebko professes her devotion to TJ Maxx, Century 21, Starbucks, "The Tudors", and "popcorn, a Coke, and a movie".  Don't yawn, it's rude.

Traviata Epic Fail

Verdi LA TRAVIATA, 12.01.11; c. Noseda; Poplavskaya, Polenzani, Dobber.

The sets, supposedly new, squeaked and creaked a number of times throughout the evening, which was distracting, to say the least. But what I really minded was the way Willy Decker managed to strip off the human intimacy in key scenes, all for the sake of "interpretation". The disjuncture between Verdi's era-specific story and Decker's dislocated reimagination is jarring. If his Violetta is this modernish hooker and her parties have many transvestites and their couches are from Ikea, then why the hell does the Germont family even care if the son is cavorting quite happily with some Lindsay Lohan? Surely in this imagined modern plane, morality and shame don't bear as much force as in, say, the socially rigid Zeffirelli universe.

Because of this dissonance, Decker's first scene of Act II, which is the opera's breaking heart, where Verdi wrote his most wrenchingly personal music, was a total failure. I do recall that in the traditional Zeffirelli, Renee Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu, Ruth Ann Swenson, and Hei-Kyung Hong (to name a few) managed to induce a melodrama that left me shamelessly misty-eyed. In the new production, Marina Poplavskaya, during this scene, wanders here and there and up and down and left and right, attempting to fill an otherwise big, empty, brightly-lit sterile void. (Paradoxically, the "big" Zeffirelli production was actually cozier and warmer in Act II, Scene I, than this "spare" Decker; the singers in this current run have been inadvertently miniaturized.)

The other problem with "concept" productions is that you end up expecting to be dazzled and surprised at every turn, so that the opera seems engaging only during special effects moments or dynamic staging (like Robert Lepage's undulating Das Rheingold platform spines) but can quickly become staid and dull when things stop moving or changing. Again, Act II's crucial scene with Violetta and Papa Germont was one casualty, the proverbial drying paint of the evening. Runner up was Act III, the other emotionally packed scene, where Violetta again wanders around, but this time in her bodacious camison, obsessed with Doctor Death. (Yawn.)

More things to say about this; perhaps I'll get to them later this week. Also, a few words need to be added regarding Marina Poplavskaya's uneven but ultimately satisfying portayal and Matthew Polenzani's singular success. But the bottom line on the Decker: an annoying disappointment.

Critically short

Scary for other reasons was Sondra Radvanovsky’s first Met Tosca, sung flat and evoking all the tragic grandeur of a Real Housewife of New Jersey.

Funny! (But only one line devoted to the headliner?)

Radvanovsky did seem a bit suburban in her demeanor, but interpretation of interpretations is almost always about personal taste more than reality. What may be gauged a bit more objectively is flatness, and after reviewing one in-house recording from first note to last, I could not sense any consistent flatness in her rendition. (I should be fair to Alagna as well: his top notes weren't terribly flat either; but the way his face tensed up launching up to them was just a tad painful to watch in person.) Alternatively, I may need to take my ears in for a tune-up. (Get it??)

But what has not been mentioned in any review that I've seen thus far is the rare kind of ovation that greeted Radvanovsky, for her exquisite Vissi d'arte and during her ecstatic curtain calls. After many years and hundreds of evenings at the Met, I could sense different degrees of ovations, and believe me, there was something special going on. The evening was buttressed with the kind of sustained energetic applause and bravas from all parts of the house (not just from one or two freaks) that the likes of Deborah Voigt may never get at the Met again. (Heck, even Renee Fleming hasn't gotten it recently.) The only other active soprano that garners the same feverish adulation is Anna Netrebko, but we know that Netrebko's is as much about the back story as the evening's performance. With no-name Radvanovsky, it seemed more a visceral response to what was actually occurring on stage. If this is a "work in progress", then we got ourselves the next major New York supernova.