off the clock

The Met streams the opener of its new production of La Traviata this Tuesday, 12/4, at 7:55pm ET, with Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Flórez, and Quinn Kelsey, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. You can check it out here if they remember to put the player back up.

sundry items

It's hardly breaking news by now, but Maestro Yannick's got the Met gig. We're fine with that, although we sort of wish he'd spend a little more time making the Philadelphia's summers (and ours) more interesting. Also it will be interesting to see what happens with the Met now officially in the churn of world-wide conductor-dom. UPDATE: Alex Ross has it all in a nutshell.

Thanks to Dr T's headsup, here is the TCE Werther with JDF and JDD from a few weeks back, role debuts for both.

"Scotland is not for the squeamish": La Donna del Lago Encore at OperaMall Millionplex

So, let me get this straight:

There's the first guy, a complete stranger whom she invites hame tae her wee croft cuz she's leal like that, and he proceeds to get all up in her personal space the whole time he's there except when her chica Albina is ostentatiously waving a wedding veil and then resorting to the Death Ray (both utterly ineffectual due to his self-evident density supernatural yet unseen Jacobean aura).*

Then there's the second guy, her main squeeze as it happens, who finds the lady not at home, but whose default mode when she's not there is apparently to raid the liquor cabinet...question mark mark mark

Then there's the third guy, who has weird, hairy friends who like to gather on hilltops at night to tub-thump and, uh, burn crosses, yeah... I can understand her being least enthusiastic about that one. With a subset that is evidently into shrooms, interpretive dance, and woad. (Not as cool as it sounds.)

Okay, go with the second guy if you have to, at least he has the benefit of being a girl, but I have to say, given these options, the obvious choice is to blow town with chica Albina and go start a B&B in the Hebrides.

*Can we just point out that if this were another Walter Scott-based gig, say Heart of Midlothian: the Opera, her girlfriends would already be making up scurrilous traditional songs about her around the fulling table by the next scene.

You all know by now the singing was brilliant, of course it was. And since that's really all this opera is about, everything else, even King Giacomo's soulful disquisition on love in the presence of heads on pikes, is just gravy.

heids up

Sharpen your claymores, bairnies, the Met premiere (no really) of La Donna del Lago, with JDD, JDF, and Daniela Barcellona livestreams tonight at 8pm ET at the usual place.