Just before the opening of Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead” at the Metropolitan Opera, I got a message from someone who had attended the dress rehearsal. The writer wanted to know whether this was what Peter Gelb thought we needed today. I’m not sure what the writer of this message was taking exception to about this opera, which I saw earlier this week. I don’t see how it can be the production values of Patrice Chereau’s powerful staging (which originated at the Aix-en-Provence festival, and is available as a DVD with Pierre Boulez conducting). True, you could say that the director focused more on the mass of people on stage than on the individual characters, but I’d say this was a deliberate decision. The piece, after all, is set in a prison camp, and Chereau underlines the unalleviated bleakness and facelessness of the place, which reduces men to
I, and evidently many other people, have been enjoying following the discussion about orchestras that developed in the wake of this post about Michael Kaiser. Since the post is about to scroll off the main page, I thought I’d summarize a few of the main points that emerged: call it a Cliff's Notes version for the casual reader. (read more after the jump)
The other week my colleague Tom Huizenga, of National Public Radio, and I had a conversation about the trends in the classical music field over the last ten years as part of an ongoing NPR series on "The Decade in Music." Our discussion has now been posted: You can read the interview, and/or hear it, on the NPR website.
