Mar 27, 2007

Hiatus

One thing I love about opera is that nobody ever agrees on anything. Take the recent performance of Angela Gheorghiu in Verdi's Traviata at the MET. Yesterday, I was reading this enthusiastic post. Today, the opposite;
" Gheorghiu's Violetta was, in its low key, medium voiced way, effective, but I felt there was something "patented" about it - emotions taken "out of the box" intact for this performance and then put back in, likewise intact, for the next outing.
The curtain calls were ridiculous and showed what might have been really going on in our Leading Lady's mind - all sorts of superannuated "little girl" scamperings, skippings, wavings etc.the public's Indulged Darling "in excelcis."
By the ovations she got you would have thought this woman combined the technical prowess of Sutherland (NOT!) with the interpretative genius of Callas (most definitely NOT!).
Maybe I've seen too much that has moved me as being genuine (as recently as Die Agyptische Helena on Friday and Banks, Vlasak-Nolen in La Donna del Lago on Saturday) to have responded to this kind of ersatz art. "
Stephen Charitan

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