Giacomo Puccini’s final masterpiece in Franco Zeffirelli’s opulent production by the MetOpera
Stream from anywhere on Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Oksana Dyka in the title role of Puccini’s “Turandot.” Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
Puccini’s Turandot, a grand spectacle of timeless music, rich decorations, dramatic arias, and dazzling performers is a crown-jewel in the Metropolitan Operarepertoire.
The legendary story about the cold and proud Chinese princess claiming her superiority over every contender for her heart is lavishly staged in this historic Franco Zeffirelli‘s production from 1987.
In its Week 18 of the free streaming, the MetOpera features the recording made on November 7, 2009. The cast includes soprano Maria Guleghina in the title role, tenor Marcello Giordani as Prince Calaf, soprano Marina Poplavskaya as Liu, and Samuel Ramey as Timur. Rich orchestration, the inclusion of the uncommon musical instruments in the score, innovative use of the chorus, and ballet are all parts of this grand spectacle of pride, revenge, and love. The free stream is available from 7.30pm for 23 hours.
Giacomo Puccini’s final masterpiece in Franco Zeffirelli’s opulent production returns to the Met Opera for 2019-2020 season starting from Oct. 3, 2019
Oksana Dyka in the title role of Puccini’s “Turandot.” Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
Puccini’s Turandot, a grand spectacle of timeless music, rich decorations, dramatic aria, and dazzling performers is a crown-jewel in the Metropolitan Operarepertoire.
The legendary story about the cold and proud Chinese princess claiming her superiority over every contender for her heart is lavishly staged in this historic Franco Zeffirelli‘s production from 1987. Giacomo Puccini. In the 2019-2020 season, the cast includes sopranos Christine Goerke and Nina Stemme in the title role, tenors Roberto Aronica and Marco Berti alternating as Prince Calaf, sopranos Eleanora Buratto and Hibla Gerzmava as Liu with Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducting. Rich orchestration, the inclusion of the uncommon musical instruments in the score, innovative use of chorus and ballet are all part of this grand spectacle of pride, revenge, and love.
The exhibition at the Met Breuer “Provocations: Anselm Kiefer” presents selected works from the Met collection covering artist’s 50-year career. Well known for pushing the boundaries of comfortable art and sleepy consciousness, Kiefer’s paintings, watercolors, and collages shake the norms by questioning the stale and tired concepts. The art lovers, sophisticated and novices, will appreciate the introspection and depth of thought that this expose projects. The exhibition is on view from December 13, 2017 until April 8, 2018. Read More
Returning to The Town Hall on February 16, 2018 with new program
Carla Bruni / Image courtesy of Metropolitan Entertainment
Carla Bruni, a French singer-songwriter and a former first lady and ex-supermodel is bringing her latest collection of songs to concert halls in the US in February 2018. Her dreamy yet sultry singing style of the love chansons accompanied on guitar playing by Bruni herself is guaranteed to give a terrific music night for the concertgoers. You can book tickets here.
Carla Bruni Sarkozy (née Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi) was born in 1967 in Turin, Italy and moved to France at the age of 7. Starting with the piano in school, she discovered a guitar when she was about 11 years old. Right there at the first group lesson, she realized that this is her instrument. Singing and playing guitar became her purpose in life.
She started her music career in 1997 before successfully modeling for the top couture houses in France. Her success in songwriting began when in 1999 she sent her lyrics to Julien Clerc. The songs were later included in his album Si j’étais elle . Bruni’sfirst personal disc Quelqu’un m’a ditwas released in 2002. That followed by No Promises in 2007. She continued to record after her marriage to Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France in 2007-2012.
Bruni’s third album Comme si de rien n’état was published in 2008 and Little French Songs in 2012. A 4-year interval between the releases did not mean that she stopped her career in light of becoming the first lady of France. But even though she finished the work on the songs and the recordings by 2011, “it wasn’t considered appropriate to release it while she was First Lady” according to 2013 expose in Vanity Fair.
The latest album French Touch, released by Verve in October 2017, is her fifth. She regained the pace of her performing and recording music career when her husband had lost the reelection in 2012 and the family had fully relocated from the Élysées Palace to a private residence on Right Bank. The songs included in this album are all her favorites from when “I was a teenager” as she confided in the interview to NPR’s Scott Simon.
An idea for Bruni to record English language pop and country classics was David Foster’s, an acclaimed music producer and a former chairman of Verve. The collection includes the covers that she knew by heart, so the whole project felt like a smooth sailing full of distant memories and charming reveries. In the interview with The New York Times, she reveals that its “her secret passion: singing classic rock, country and jazz standards in English”.
Carla Bruni / Image courtesy of Metropolitan Entertainment
She has been including classic rock in her latest concert programs in Paris and on tours in Europe. However, her program at the NYC appearance in 2013 has featured primarily the songs from the newly released at that time Quelqu’un m’a dit album. All were in French or Italian delivered with the mastery, elegance, and simplicity.
The upcoming concert in February in NYC will give her fans a chance to enjoy an unbelievable mix of familiar classics performed in subtly sexy voice making it even more chic with a hint of French accent.
The Met Breuerexhibition of works by Edvard Munch (1861-1944), a Norwegian Expressionist artist, gives the viewers a chance to see the paintings from the Munch Museum in Oslo and other European and private collections. Some of the paintings are shown in New York for the first time.
The exhibition makes a moody and sobering impression as one would expect at a mention of the artist’s name. Munch is known for powerfully presenting the emotional moments of life repeating the same situations in multiple versions. Opening up with the self-portrait which gives the title to the exhibition, the show explores the themes dear to the artist to which he kept returning to at different stages of his life. The exhibition will run through February 4, 2018.
Edvard Munch was born in 1861 to the family of a medical officer. His mother and then his beloved sister Sophie had died from tuberculosis when he was 14. These tragic events made a very strong impression on the future artist and were later depicted in many of his works. Munch himself had suffered from many of diseases in childhood. Later he was haunted by depression and alcohol dependency. His personal life was stressful and unhappy. So, naturally his works are full of high tensions and despair.
Starting drawing from a young age, Munch had enrolled into the Royal School of Art and Design of Kristiania, Norway where he experimented with various expressionist styles. He visited Paris and Berlin and sampled the artistic scenes there coming under the influences of major artists of the early 90s. In that productive period, he sketched or created the first versions of many of the themes to which he kept returning, again and again, later in life.
While he came to fame rather early in his career in the late 1880s – early 1890s, Munch himself believed that he reached his breakthrough in art when he was fifty. By that time he already resettled back in Norway after a turbulent life on the move between France, Germany, and Denmark. In 1908-1909 he suffered a mental breakdown from which he recovered upon his return to his native Norway. The result of the emotional torments gave us his famously high-strung paintings.
This current exhibition at the Met Breuer presents about 50 of Munch’s works. Each gallery in the exhibition is dedicated to a theme: Self-Portraits, Nocturnes, Despair, Sickness and Death, Puberty and Passion, Attraction and Repulsion, and In the Studio. This thematic rather than a chronological arrangement allows the viewer to follow the artist’s maturity of style and the changes in technique. As Munch was coming back to the same subject repeatedly with years in between, the ascents of colors and the pace of strokes conveys his personal take on the same situation over time. The FT review points out that “these juxtapositions is at once stunning and depressing, a showcase of genius and delusion.” A group of works under the Despair theme includes a lithograph of “The Scream” from 1895.
Munch’s landscapes and life scenes en plain air are characteristically unsoothing and moody. The low skies, the broody sunsets and eery reflections of in the water are alarming. The tensions continue in the paintings of his studio. Even the tender embrace of “The Kiss” surrounded by the dark background while sensual and tender, doesn’t promise a happy ending. Munch’s great genius of catching the emotional dread and the pain of the soul is in full view here. “Who better to guide us through our own fatalistic age?” asks rhetorically the review of the exhibition in The New York Times.
