Arsen Soghomonyan and Sonya Yoncheva as Hermann and Lisa. Ken Howard/MetOpera When details of star soprano Anna Netrebko’s lawsuit against the Metropolitan Opera surfaced, one of the projects planned for her was a revival of Tchaikovsky’s searing tragedy Queen of Spades. After she became soprano non grata at the Met in response to the Ukraine […]
The Met’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ Reframes Ancient Tragedy Through the Lens of Propaganda
Julia Bullock as Cleopatra. Photo: Karen Almond / Met Opera We learn much of what we know about Antony and Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s eponymous play through something of a non-entity. Enobarbus tells us that “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety.” By the time he says this, we’ve met the queen and […]
‘Schoenberg in Hollywood’ Lands in L.A.
At the Nimoy Theater, the composer’s story returns to the place where it originally unfolded. Photo: Liza Voll Austrian auto-didact, music theorist, pedagogue, writer and emancipator of dissonance, composer Arnold Schoenberg was a lot of things, but cuddly wasn’t one of them. “Uncompromising and pretty curmudgeonly, Schoenberg had a genius for getting people to hate […]
‘Giulio Cesare’ Versus ‘Antony and Cleopatra’: Round Two
Song Hee Lee as Cleopatra amid Ruckus at Hudson Hall. Photo: Paul Kheir In September of 1966, the Metropolitan Opera opened its brand-new Lincoln Center home with the world premiere of samuel barber’s Antony and Cleopatra while New York City Opera, now its close neighbor across the plaza, simultaneously served up sly counter-programming with Handel’s […]