Have you tried OperaVision?
For something different… as Limelight tells us, it’s time to explore this amazing EU opera project. This week, the Russians are coming.
Read about it here: Watch live streams as the operas themselves unfold in the opera house. View your favourite performances, subtitled, on demand. Learn about the art form and specific productions by browsing our richly populated digital library, stories, and articles.’
Check out offerings here. Yes, they have surtitles. Currently available are a beautifully filmed Eugene Onegin and the baroque gem, Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses..
Coming up is Barrie Kosky’s take on Mussorgsky's comic-grotesque version of another Gogol story, from a Russian myth, Sorochintsy Fair.
Click here for full Limelight summary of the amazing array of livestreamings.
Opera of the week?
For the pick of the week, we’re back in Glyndebourne, for their controversial Don Giovanni. See the next post for all the talking points.
Don't forget that Glyndebourne's brilliant, witty, beautiful production of The Marriage of Figaro is streaming for free on their YouTube channel until Sunday 31st May.
And meanwhile, what's at the Met?
The Met's shocker this week is actually not Salome (you know how that story ends already) but Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel.
Stir crazy in our isolated times? Here’s a dinner party of smart people cut off from the social rules that sustain them, reverting to barbarism. Adès summarizes neatly, “It’s about the end of the world. It’s a catastrophe.” It’s a brilliant opera with brilliant music; splendid review in New Yorker here.
Limelight magazine's Clive agrees here. There's a Guardian review here of how he turned the film from Spanish director Luis Buñuel into an opera that’s riveting for Adès' music as well as the horror story whose ending you... don’t know...
But then, everything from the Met this week is worth watching. Dates below are for our time: the opera streams for the whole of that day and overnight, finishing 8.30am. As always go to https://www.metopera.org/.
Monday, June 1st Strauss’s Salome Starring Karita Mattila, Ildikó Komlósi, Kim Begley, Joseph Kaiser, and Juha Uusitalo, conducted by Patrick Summers. From October 11, 2008.
Tuesday, June 2 Bellini’s I Puritani Starring Anna Netrebko, Eric Cutler, Franco Vassallo, and John Relyea, conducted by Patrick Summers. From 2007.
Wednesday, June 3 Berg’s Lulu Starring Marlis Petersen, Susan Graham, Daniel Brenna, Paul Groves, Johan Reuter, and Franz Grundheber, conducted by Lothar Koenigs. From 2015.
Thursday, June 4
Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice Starring Danielle de Niese, Heidi Grant Murphy, and above all, Stephanie Blythe, conducted by James Levine. From 2009.
An early starring for de Niese, and she did well, but the show belongs to Stephanie Blythe. Were you entranced by her gypsy in Masked Ball? Wait till you see and hear her Orpheus! NYTimes review here. Read about the opera on our website from 2017 when our group discussed operas from Greek myths.
Friday, June 5 brings the Met’s dip into history for the week – here with the extraordinary Shirley Verrett. If you have 22 minutes, watch and listen to her many voices over the years here. Here’s her Tosca with Pavarotti as Cavaradossi : NYTimes review from the archives is here.
Puccini’s Tosca Starring Shirley Verrett, Luciano Pavarotti, and Cornell MacNeil, conducted by James Conlon. From 1978.
You don’t know the opera and the challenge of this role? Read about it on our blog here – which links you to earlier sessions we’ve had on Puccini and Tosca.
Saturday, June 6 Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel Our pick of the Met bunch, but it isn't jolly. Starring Audrey Luna, Amanda Echalaz, Sally Matthews, Sophie Bevan, Alice Coote, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, Joseph Kaiser, Frédéric Antoun, David Portillo, David Adam Moore, Rod Gilfry, Kevin Burdette, Christian Van Horn, and John Tomlinson, conducted by Thomas Adès. From 2017.
Sunday, June 7 Verdi’s Otello Starring Sonya Yoncheva, Aleksandrs Antonenko, and Željko Lučić, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. From 2015.
Monday, June 8: Our next week in opera starts with a splendid production of the opera that brought you the Meditation! Read all about the opera and this production on our blog last year here. Massenet’s Thaïs Starring Renée Fleming, Michael Schade, and Thomas Hampson, conducted by Jesús López-Cobos. From 2008