Guinevere wrote:We have tickets to the Met to see Le Nozze de Figaro in November and I'm very excited about it!
Lucky you, I'm so jealous! Which performance are you going to see? If it's the one with Hei-Kyung Hong as Countess Almaviva I'll be even more jealous. In my CD player in permanent rotation I have the 1952 recording with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the Countess and Irmgard Seefried as Susanna (Herbert von Karajan & the Vienna Philharmonic), which is probably the most delightful version I've heard. That Mozart guy could sure write a tune.
Conductor: David Robertson
Countess Almaviva: Maija Kovalevska
Susanna: Mojca Erdmann
Cherubino: Christine Schäfer
Count Almaviva: Gerald Finley
Figaro: Ildar Abdrazakov
I've never seen Figaro -- I'm a huge Die Zauberflöte fan, and just love that Wolfie. Did I tell you that the first time we were in Saltzburg my father just about got us kicked out of his birth house for illegally photographing his harpsichord? Dad had just finished building his and was a bit over excited....
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
The first performance of Zauberflote I saw was with my son (then age 5) appearing as the youngest of the Papageno children. A friend of my mom's worked for the Opera Company of Philadelphia and was looking for child "supers" for the production. She called to see if the boy might be available. I asked him if he wanted to be in the opera.
"Opera?" he said. "What's that?"
"It's people on a stage singing and telling a story," I replied.
"Oh, you mean like 'NSync?" he said.
"Um, not exactly ... "
"Well, if it's not rock and roll, I'm not really interested."
"Why don't you just try it and see what it's about?"
"Okay, sure, whatever."
Turned out he didn't like the singing so much, but loved being on stage and acting, and he continued on in three or four more operas after that.
Ha! As part of my son's gig, I got to see Anna Netrebko sing Giulietta in Bellini's "Capulets and Montagues." The best part was going to the rehearsals (I went to all of them) and sitting about 10 feet in front of her.
I'm honestly not that current on who the top sopranos are right now, but as a former mezzo-soprano I adore Frederica Von Stade and was lucky enough to attend the master class she gave at BU a few years ago.
As I said, I'm excited we are going. I've seen opera in Boston, DC, Baltimore, London and Vienna, but I've never been to the Met.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
Being only a 1 hour train ride from Manhattan, you would think I would have seen more than one play/show since 1997 but hey, that's me. In 1997 we took the kids to see the Christmas show with the Rockettes. While it was nice, those things do not thrill me.
A year or so before that we went and saw Annie. The damn bar closed when the second act started. Would have brought a flask if I had known.
Sue, you line 'em up, I'll take them in that order... Very beautiful women!
Sue U wrote:
But at 53 maybe she's a bit old for your tastes?
Good god no!! I am a conesewer[sic] of women of my age!!
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
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