Fall flurries

Ladies, I announce lots of juicy additions and changes to Brad's Met Futures page:

For the 2010-11 season: Orfeo ed Euridice has been added to the repertory, and will feature David Daniels and Lisette Oropesa (as Amor); the Danish contralto Susanne Resmark will make her Met debut as Ragonde in Le Comte Ory; Marina Poplavskaya takes over Violetta from Anna Netrebko; Kathleen Kim sings Madame Mao in Nixon in China; Anne Sofie von Otter will be Clairon in Capriccio (instead of Susan Graham); Susan Graham will sing Iphigenie; Canadian mezzo Julie Boulianne debuts as Stephano in Romeo et Juliette and then moves on to sing Diana in Iphigenie; Sondra Radvanovsky will sing Leonora in Trovatore instead of Tosca; and finally, Deborah Voigt is the Minnie in Fanciulla del West.

For the 2011-12 season: Gustavo Dudamel is no longer slated to conduct L'elisir d'amore; Maestro Michele Mariotti will debut in his place; Daedalus and Les Troyens have been dropped, while Fille du Regiment and Turandot have been added to the roster; Angela Meade will share the role of Anna Bolena with Anna Netrebko; German soprano Mojca Erdmann makes her Met debut as Zerlina, at the premiere of the new Grandage Don Giovanni; Mikhail Petrenko will be Basilio in Barbiere di Siviglia.

For the 2012-13 season: Die Frau Ohne Schatten has been dropped from the planned list, while Carmen and Falstaff have been added; the season will see the return of Les Troyens, with Susan Graham and Marcello Giordani; Rigoletto will be a new production, with Diana Damrau and Lisette Oropesa sharing the role of Gilda, Piotr Beczala as the Duke, and Zeljko Lucic and George Gagnidze sharing the title role.


For the 2013-14 season, Die Frau Ohne Schatten will return, with Maestro Vladimir Jurowski conducting.

She's back

STRAUSS Der Rosenkavalier, Met 13 October 2009; c. de Waart, Fleming, Graham, Persson, Sigmundsson, White, Ketelsen, Vargas.

Curtain up: things have settled enough for Sieglinde to reboot. I'm seeing an equilibrium based on (really) short posts, but it's still being calibrated, so patience please. Last night, the return of Renee Fleming's Feldmarschallin and Susan Graham's Octavian, and a debut of a promising soprano, Miah Persson as Sophie, ethereal in a Judith Blegen hue. I'm dreading the day when I can detect the inevitable pulling back in Renee's voice. My current (conservative) diagnosis: it'll be sometime after April of 2017. Plus, you know how whatever Renee is singing currently becomes just THAT role divinely written for her: I'd say it, but that would be boring. One minor quibble: she is taking more time to warm up. Susan Graham's voice has grown tremendously in size in recent years, and the colors are thrilling. The chemistry between these ladies' voices is akin to baseball's Rodriguez-Teixeira tandem (BTW, Go Yankees.). Kristinn Sigmundsson is one of the evening's weak links. I'm not particularly aroused by Ochs' frequent interruptions, so to have a bland bass for the evening is torture times two. Meanwhile, Ramon Vargas probably had his worst outing on the Met stage as the Italian Singer. The unadorned oasis that the aria was to be didn't be. Really, it was physically painful to hear. Finally, all together now: Jimmy get well soon. Maestro Edo de Waart was either conducting or mowing the lawn, I couldn't tell.

Latest updates

I'm transitioning to another appointment (the kind that promises tenure at the end of the tunnel!), which is why I've been absent the past few months. In the next few weeks, I'll have to figure out how to achieve productive homeostasis between work and play, because I don't want Sieglinde to "die" just like that. But the new job is grueling, and the demands for tenure daunting, so no promises. Meanwhile, I have an inch thick of tickets to the Met, for an ambitious list of 20+ operas this season (many for multiple viewings, especially the Armida and the Attila). What was I thinking when I bought these tickets? Well, we'll see how things equilibrate. We may just have to settle for twitter-type blog entries, who knows.

In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy the latest edits on Brad's Met Futures page:

For the 2010-11 season: Madama Butterfly has been dropped; Anna Netrebko has been taken off La Traviata; Joyce Di Donato has been taken off Le Comte Ory. For Wozzeck, Peter Rose has been taken off the roster, while Walter Fink has been added; and for Don Carlo, Patricia Racette replaces Angela Marambio. Maestro Roberto Rizzi Brignoli will debut to conduct La Boheme, and Cristina Gallardo-Domas will share the role of Mimi. Vittorio Grigolo will share the role of the Duke in Rigoletto (after his debut in La Boheme in the same season). Dwayne Croft has been added to the roster of La Fanciulla del West to sing Sonora, while Salvatore Licitra will sing Cavaradossi in Tosca.

For the 2012-13 season: Francesca da Rimini remains in the repertory, but it may not be a new production. Don Carlo will have Angela Marambio, Anna Smirnova as Eboli in her debut, Eric Halfvarson as the Grand Inquisitor, and Maestro Lorin Maazel as conductor.

Met Futures: March Madness edition

Sieglinde, in the midst of work-related turmoil, brings you the latest juicy updates to Brad's Met Futures page:

For the 2010-11 season: Sondra Radvanovsky has been added to the cast of Tosca; Simon O'Neill will join the cast of Die Walküre as a second Siegmund; for Don Carlo, Simon Keenlyside has been tapped to sing Posa, and Maestro Lorin Maazel has been removed as conductor; In Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Cristina Gallardo-Domas will be Antonia; and in Nixon in China, Janis Kelly will debut as Pat Nixon.

For the 2011-12 season: Aida has been added to the roster, with a cast that includes Violeta Urmana, Stephanie Blythe, and Stefan Kocan as Ramfis; Maria Guleghina returns as Abigaille in Nabucco; and the Rodelinda cast will feature the return of celebrated portrayals by Renée Fleming, Stephanie Blythe, Andreas Scholl, and Kobie van Rensburg, alongside Iestyn Davies, who will debut as Unulfo.


For the 2012-13 season: Parsifal will be a new production, co-produced with Opera de Lyon and directed by Francois Girard, which will star Jonas Kaufmann; Simon Keenlyside will be Prospero in The Tempest; and Mariusz Kwiecien will be Onegin.

[Sieglinde at the moment is too busy to blog, but she's been to a bunch of things since she last wrote. Who knows if she'll get around to sharing her thoughts, trashing a few conductors, and not trashing Natalie Dessay for a change.]