likelyimpossibilities.com
Boris Godunov 2: The Empire Strikes Back – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/2016/09/boris-godunov-2-the-empire-strikes-back.html
Standing: Theater an der Wien. Boris Godunov 2: The Empire Strikes Back. September 23, 2016. Gil Rose, Aleš Briscein and Olga Jelínková Photo by Kathy Wittman. As a concept, Dvořák’s opera. Is hard to beat. Its libretto is a sequel to another opera,. Also, Dvořák apparently never heard Musorgsky’s opera and his musical style is, well, very different. Thanks to Odyssey Opera in Boston, I am deprived of Czech grand opera, and. When they could have done another. But with two intermissions and some enthusias...
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Puccini and His World – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/2016/08/puccini-and-his-world.html
Standing: Theater an der Wien. Puccini and His World. August 5, 2016. The Bard Music Festival (at Bard College, which is on the Hudson River well north of New York but south of Albany) starts this weekend and this year focuses on Puccini. As the festival’s introduction put it, Puccini is a composer whose enormous popularity with audiences today tends to efface his controversial past:. As usual the festival’s concerts. I wrote the program note for Program Five, which is. If you get the whole thing you can...
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Ich kann nicht sitzen: Standing Room at the Musikverein and Philharmoniker – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/2010/09/ich-kann-nicht-sitzen-standing-room-at_26.html
Standing: Theater an der Wien. Ich kann nicht sitzen: Standing Room at the Musikverein and Philharmoniker. September 26, 2010. The Musikverein, located just south of the Ring off Karlsplatz, is an unmissable stop on the tourist trail, but is hardly a model of institutional innovation. Individual programs can be good, but tend towards the conservative. The season as a whole lacks variety (something we will look at more shortly in my Duplicate Programming Watch. Or at the ticket office, located on the nort...
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The Butterfly of Pittsfield – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/2016/08/the-butterfly-of-pittsfield.html
Standing: Theater an der Wien. The Butterfly of Pittsfield. August 29, 2016. There are a lot of great things about living in western Massachusetts, but a plethora of places to see live opera is not one of them. The new Berkshire Opera Festival,. Based in Pittsfield, is trying to change that. Their ambitious and professional production of. Which opened on Saturday, suggests that their arrival is a welcome one. But it was great to see such an enthusiastic and local audience out to see opera in this appropr...
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She sings for herself – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/2016/09/she-sings-for-herself.html
Standing: Theater an der Wien. She sings for herself. September 25, 2016. On Friday, Boston beheld the East Coast debut of Calixto Bieito, and Boston giggled nervously. That’s right, the Boston Lyric Opera held an opening night gala marking the company’s return to the Boston Opera House, featuring. Calixto Bieito’s modernized, de-romanticized, decidedly un-gala-like production of. And have written about his most famous production,. Die Entfühurung aus dem Serail. You only get a hint of that excess in this.
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Ich kann nicht sitzen: Standing Room at the Vienna State Opera – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/2010/09/ich-kann-nicht-sitzen-standing-room-a-2.html
Standing: Theater an der Wien. Ich kann nicht sitzen: Standing Room at the Vienna State Opera. September 24, 2010. So, you’re visiting Vienna and you want to go to the opera. Your guidebook suggests that you avail yourself of the many cheap standing room (Stehplatz) tickets sold on the day of each performance, but that’s just about all it says. If you want to know waaaay more than is necessary about the mechanics of the ritual that is the Wiener Staatsoper’s standing room, here’s your guide. Is probably ...
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The Met’s 2016-17 season by the numbers – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/2016/08/the-mets-2016-17-season-by-the-numbers.html
Standing: Theater an der Wien. The Met’s 2016-17 season by the numbers. August 16, 2016. Around a year ago I used pie charts to analyze the Met’s 2015-16 programming,. Revealing that what appeared to be a very Donizetti-heavy season was actually a very heavy Donizetti and Puccini season. This was interesting and popular so I’ve done it again for 2016-17. Remember: you can now like my blog on Facebook. So, there’s a lot of Verdi. Did you guess right? Puccini, surprisingly, only has two (the omnipresent.
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Review: Met Opera – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/category/review/met
Standing: Theater an der Wien. Don’t Ash, Don’t Tell. October 30, 2016. You will only see select parts of this from the Family Circle. All I wanted was to see a production of. Which didn’t become a major news event. But I went yesterday, and the performance ended without Act IV but with me giving interviews to both the Times. So I have only three acts of. Due to my Amtrak train running over two hours late. This season has been terrific so far! But this production has a really great cast! April 16, 2016.
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Press – Likely Impossibilities
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Standing: Theater an der Wien. Alex Ross, “Mastersinger,”. October 7, 2013. Alex Ross, “Critics of Robert Lepage’s ‘Ring des Nibelungen,”. Patrick Bahners, “ Mit dieser Stund vorbei: Abschied von der ältesten Inszenierung im Repertoire der Met.”. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,. December 30, 2013 (in German). Jacek Marczyński, “Putin krytykowany, Polacy chwaleni,”. September 25, 2013 (in Polish). Heike Matthiesen, “Linktipps 2012/09,”. September 2012 (in German). Zachary Woolfe, “Bad Romance,”. Post was ...
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Elsewhere – Likely Impossibilities
http://likelyimpossibilities.com/category/elsewhere
Standing: Theater an der Wien. September 26, 2016. I’m not going to be at the Met’s new production of. Until October 8, but I talked to the Met’s Tristan, Stuart Skelton, and wrote about the history of the Heldentenor in today’s. I drove you to the abyss. It’s unclear exactly what killed Schnorr von Carolsfeld, but the story that the opera did him in has persisted for a reason. You can read the whole article here. Newcomers, and color commentary from Speight Jenkins and Brian Zeger. February 20, 2017.
