Word: donizetti
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...wake wherever she goes. Opposing her were the forces of decorum and rectitude, represented by Met general manager Joseph Volpe. The denouement was catastrophe. Volpe, citing "unprofessional actions . . . profoundly detrimental to the artistic collaboration among all the cast members," summarily fired Battle from this week's production of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment and withdrew all future offers. In so doing, he set off grand international choruses of "It's about time...
Kathleen Battle, the famously temperamental soprano, was summarily fired by New York's Metropolitan Opera. Reason: "unprofessional actions" during rehearsals for Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment. Battle said she was "saddened" by the decision...
...Hill's Phantom of the Opera. First produced in England in 1976, this comic melodrama had a book by Hill and a score by Ian Armit. In 1984 Hill dropped the original music and wrote new lyrics to arias by Gounod, Offenbach, Verdi, Mozart and Donizetti. Lloyd Webber considered producing an embellished version of it, then decided to do his own. Thank heavens. Hill's backstage farce is a kind of Noises Off without the wit, and the cast plays it as hammy gaslight farce -- a penny dreadful that at today's prices plays like a $32.50 dreadful. It alights...
...program note to her startling, macabre -- and, on opening night, lustily booed -- new production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera, Francesca Zambello cites as inspiration the gloomy tales of Edgar Allan Poe and the brooding landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, both contemporaries of the composer. Maybe. But those with an eye for contemporary culture -- and the weekly grosses of Francis Ford Coppola's latest film in Variety -- can see that the real influence is one Mr. Zeitgeist. The Bride of Dracula, anybody...
What may have most roused the normally comatose Met audience was the production's feminist subtext. This Lucia is less a helpless damsel in distress than a strong, sexual woman who chooses death before dishonor -- Elektra's first cousin. Although she had some vocal difficulties on opening night (Donizetti's high notes are best not delivered while the soprano is on her knees or flat on her back), reigning bel canto diva June Anderson's forceful stage presence ensures that the heroine gives as good as she gets. Other notables include a promising American tenor, Richard Leech, as Lucia...