Chatting about Met streaming
Apr. 1st, 2020 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnThis is your reminder that tomorrow evening (and for the next 24 hours after that) the Met is streaming Don Carlo, one of my favorite productions ever, with the extra-fabulous Furlanetto, the gorgeous Poplavskaya, my fave Keenlyside (who is choreographed properly!), and the marvelously dramatic Alagna :D So watch it and then come back and talk to me about it! Like, seriously, I would rec this even to people for whom opera isn't their thing, if you happen to like music and ~drama~ :D (Although I think the first act is much less interesting than the rest of it -- okay, fine, I'm in it for the love triangle between son, father, and son's best friend, and less so for the son-father-wife triangle -- by which you can see how, er, operatic this is! Anyway, that is a long-winded way of saying, skip the first act if het love stories are Not Your Fave.)
Next week the Met will be streaming (among other things) Aida with Netrebko, which I was about a quarter through watching anyway, so I'm gonna commit to finish watching that and am excited to talk about that with anyone who is watching it.
Also, if anyone has anything interesting about any other broadcasts, including last week's Wagner, I'd love to hear it. I didn't watch any of the Wagner but I still have my Met on Demand subscription (which I'm going to keep for at least another month or two) so I could at some point, if there's one that anyone highly recommends.
Meanwhile... it only took me what, two weeks, but I finally finished the Met Trovatore! Hvorostovsky and Netrebko were of course excellent. Hvorostovsky always does really really well in roles that feature a jerk who is desperately in love with the heroine (thus he is my favorite di Luna and Onegin). Netrebko just is my favorite singing actor -- whenever I see her play a part, she is that part, and it's sort of terribly obvious in a scene where she's matched with someone who isn't a really really good singing actor. But Hvorostovsky is, okay maybe not 100% always but pretty much always when he can play off of someone as good as Netrebko.
I came for those two, but I stayed for Yonghoon Lee, whom I'd never heard of before but who I really loved -- he matches the other two, in my opinion, in dynamic acting and moving singing. (That is a great compliment, because H and N are so amazing. <3 ) He really sold the Troubadour as this hotheaded, passionate guy, and for the first time I could see why Leonora might be drawn to Manrico (also have I mentioned Lee is super hot?), and the scene between Azucena and Manrico where she confesses the past was simply riveting, which I was not expecting. Definitely going to be following him in the future!
And, man, the scenes between the pairs of them were riveting. Hvorostovsky does pining So Well, omg, and his scene with Netrebko <3 And also Lee and Hvorostovsky, lol, that first duel is hilarious because they only have eyes for each other and Leonora's all "hey, what about me??" I love it!
The ending was great (they're all So Good, they all sold that really nonsensical ending) but the first Trovatore I saw (also with Hvorostovsky) had di Luna cradling the dead Manrico at the end and I no longer admit that there is any kind of ending I recognize :P
A couple of things I was ???? about:
-I thought -- and wikipedia backs me up -- that there were more of di Luna's guys when he bursts in to try to get Leonora at the end of Act II? But for some reason it seemed like there were like a billion of Manrico's guys (even literally climbing the walls) and di Luna was just strolling around by himself? idk, maybe I didn't understand what was going on
-beginning of act III, there are these random hookers that show up to be pawed at by the soldiers (and act like they enjoyed it)?? I mean, sure, I get that regie productions of various operas want to put hookers in (although I still don't like them there and think they'd be better without) but here it mostly made me think, "Ah yes, the Met, bastion of anti-progressiveness." This was before #MeToo; it's a little glaring because I can't imagine a similar scene set today -- okay, except maybe at the Met -- with precisely that degree of obliviousness. It wasn't trying to be edgy or make an ironic point, just... it felt like someone said, hey, you know what would make this scene cooler? Hookers! Spoiler: it does not make the scene cooler at all. Also, I Did Not Like that it is staged so that di Luna is totally enjoying the hookers' company. He's not that kind of jerk! He's di Luna, not Scarpia!
-was it my imagination or did the scar on di Luna's cheek disappear briefly during this scene?
But on the whole, omg so good!
Next week the Met will be streaming (among other things) Aida with Netrebko, which I was about a quarter through watching anyway, so I'm gonna commit to finish watching that and am excited to talk about that with anyone who is watching it.
Also, if anyone has anything interesting about any other broadcasts, including last week's Wagner, I'd love to hear it. I didn't watch any of the Wagner but I still have my Met on Demand subscription (which I'm going to keep for at least another month or two) so I could at some point, if there's one that anyone highly recommends.
Meanwhile... it only took me what, two weeks, but I finally finished the Met Trovatore! Hvorostovsky and Netrebko were of course excellent. Hvorostovsky always does really really well in roles that feature a jerk who is desperately in love with the heroine (thus he is my favorite di Luna and Onegin). Netrebko just is my favorite singing actor -- whenever I see her play a part, she is that part, and it's sort of terribly obvious in a scene where she's matched with someone who isn't a really really good singing actor. But Hvorostovsky is, okay maybe not 100% always but pretty much always when he can play off of someone as good as Netrebko.
I came for those two, but I stayed for Yonghoon Lee, whom I'd never heard of before but who I really loved -- he matches the other two, in my opinion, in dynamic acting and moving singing. (That is a great compliment, because H and N are so amazing. <3 ) He really sold the Troubadour as this hotheaded, passionate guy, and for the first time I could see why Leonora might be drawn to Manrico (also have I mentioned Lee is super hot?), and the scene between Azucena and Manrico where she confesses the past was simply riveting, which I was not expecting. Definitely going to be following him in the future!
And, man, the scenes between the pairs of them were riveting. Hvorostovsky does pining So Well, omg, and his scene with Netrebko <3 And also Lee and Hvorostovsky, lol, that first duel is hilarious because they only have eyes for each other and Leonora's all "hey, what about me??" I love it!
The ending was great (they're all So Good, they all sold that really nonsensical ending) but the first Trovatore I saw (also with Hvorostovsky) had di Luna cradling the dead Manrico at the end and I no longer admit that there is any kind of ending I recognize :P
A couple of things I was ???? about:
-I thought -- and wikipedia backs me up -- that there were more of di Luna's guys when he bursts in to try to get Leonora at the end of Act II? But for some reason it seemed like there were like a billion of Manrico's guys (even literally climbing the walls) and di Luna was just strolling around by himself? idk, maybe I didn't understand what was going on
-beginning of act III, there are these random hookers that show up to be pawed at by the soldiers (and act like they enjoyed it)?? I mean, sure, I get that regie productions of various operas want to put hookers in (although I still don't like them there and think they'd be better without) but here it mostly made me think, "Ah yes, the Met, bastion of anti-progressiveness." This was before #MeToo; it's a little glaring because I can't imagine a similar scene set today -- okay, except maybe at the Met -- with precisely that degree of obliviousness. It wasn't trying to be edgy or make an ironic point, just... it felt like someone said, hey, you know what would make this scene cooler? Hookers! Spoiler: it does not make the scene cooler at all. Also, I Did Not Like that it is staged so that di Luna is totally enjoying the hookers' company. He's not that kind of jerk! He's di Luna, not Scarpia!
-was it my imagination or did the scar on di Luna's cheek disappear briefly during this scene?
But on the whole, omg so good!
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Date: 2020-04-03 03:50 am (UTC)I hope you are doing okay <3 (Verdi, meanwhile, is soothing for me -- I think there's something about how everyone is so very over-the-top Emoting and Dramatic that is paradoxically kind of comforting -- is that weird? -- and also I can be like, okay, maybe there's a pandemic going on, but hey, at least I didn't throw my baby into a fire or fall in love with my dad's new wife! --that is, I don't know if it would be helpful to you mental-health-wise to check out Don Carlo, but maybe it would be?)