{"id":1114,"date":"2020-03-14T10:45:19","date_gmt":"2020-03-14T17:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2020-03-14T10:54:21","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T17:54:21","slug":"the-last-time-i-was-at-the-met","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/the-last-time-i-was-at-the-met\/","title":{"rendered":"The last time I was at the Met…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the Metropolitan Opera<\/a>\u2014not to mention the Metropolitan Museum and anything else with Metropolitan or New York or City in its title\u2014is on indeterminate hiatus during the current crisis, I thought I would reflect on the last opera I saw there: Handel’s Agrippina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

By great good luck, I\u00a0happened to catch this\u00a0stellar production during my February trip to New York (which now seems much longer than a month ago, given everything that has happened since). I had already seen at least one unsuccessful production of this semi-comic, semi-historical, semi-ridiculous opera, so I knew in advance how hard it would be\u00a0to get the tone right. To my surprise and delight, the Met performance succeeded on every level. I found it\u00a0laugh-out-loud funny in places and oddly moving in others, and the rest of the audience seemed to agree with me. (You could tell by the laughter, and also by the fact that they uncharacteristically stayed in their seats until the end, which\u00a0in this case was more than four hours after the beginning.)<\/p>\n

When faced with Handel’s historical operas, one can either decide to update\u00a0to a more recent moment or capitulate to a false sense of history. There are risks either way, but in this case the decision to modernize\u00a0was the right one.\u00a0Giving a twentieth-century\u00a0look and feel to\u00a0this Roman tale\u2014which involves\u00a0Empress Agrippina’s effort to get her son, Nero, installed as\u00a0the heir to his stepfather, Emperor Claudio\u2014never felt\u00a0gratuitous or off, and even the obvious anachronisms (like Agrippina’s 1950s hairdo and little black dress) only served to enhance the humor.<\/p>\n

As a whole, the\u00a0production was greatly\u00a0aided by the calibre of its stars. \u00a0Joyce DiDonato as Agrippina, Iestyn Davies as Ottone (the loyal but betrayed commander of the emperor’s army), and a brilliant newcomer, Kate Lindsay, in the pants role of Nero all did their utmost to make the lengthy\u00a0evening an intense pleasure. The rest of the cast was vocally excellent as well, but these three could act as well as sing, and that was essential. DiDonato, in particular, invented a hilarious strut\u2014part Marilyn Monroe, part cartoonish battle-axe Mom, and part Maggie Thatcher in high heels\u2014that utterly defined her character. Even the way she held her hands, like little paws dangling from her wrists, expressed this woman’s character in a way that was both funny and frightening.<\/p>\n

Harry Bicket, whose annual Handel concerts at Carnegie Hall<\/a>\u00a0I always religiously attend, did beautifully with the orchestra, as I expected him to. And when I looked to see who had directed this brilliant confection, lo and behold!\u2014it was David McVicar, whose marvelous Death in Venice<\/em><\/a> (starring the incomparable Mark Padmore as Aschenbach) I had just witnessed at Covent Garden<\/a>\u00a0last December. For a director to get one difficult opera right is unusual enough. For him to do two in a row is nothing short of miraculous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the Metropolitan Opera\u2014not to mention the Metropolitan Museum and anything else with Metropolitan or New York or City in its title\u2014is on indeterminate hiatus during the current crisis, I thought I would reflect on the last opera I saw … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[635,64,633,636,51,240,187,241,634,237,13],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-lesser-blog","tag-agrippina","tag-carnegie-hall","tag-david-mcvicar","tag-death-in-venice","tag-handel","tag-harry-bicket","tag-iestyn-davies","tag-joyce-didonato","tag-kate-lindsey","tag-mark-padmore","tag-metropolitan-opera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1118,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions\/1118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threepennyreview.com\/lesserblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}