Richard Sasanow

From her first appearance on stage, it was clear that mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina was no flash in the pan when she gave us a scorching Carmen when this production was new just two years ago. The program describes the title character as “a force of nature” and that’s certainly what we got at the Met, in such arias as the Habanera (“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”), the Seguidilla (“Pres des ramparts de Seville”) or in the opera’s Finale with Don Jose.

This is Beth Morrison’s first year as sole curator, producer and presenter of New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival of indie opera/music theatre. She’s also midwife for the birth of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s gorgeously composed HILDEGARD, its centerpiece, which I heard at the Gerald Lynch Theater at John Jay College on January 11. Morrison has proven herself, once again, to be true to her eponymous organization’s seeming marching orders: “I never do anything twice.”

The Met’s new production of Vincenzo Bellini’s I PURITANI made its debut on New Year’s Eve, but I caught up with it at its third performance on January 6. I was glad I did--because it offered a cast with staggering singing abilities in four major roles that offered major demands, along with at least one minor one and the brilliant Met chorus under Tilman Michael. Simply put, soprano Lisette Oropesa, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, baritone Artur Rucinski and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn sang the pants off their roles, with Marco Armiliato conducting the fearless Met orchestra.

Not long ago, I was sitting in a café in midtown Manhattan with Beth Morrisson, president and creative producer of Beth Morrison Projects (BMP). BMP has been pushing the boundaries of traditional opera for 20 years and is now sole curator, producer and presenter of the indie-opera/music theatre Prototype Festival, with performances through January 18 in New York City.

The program said “Christmas Night Opera” but it didn’t happen till the 27th at Carnegie Hall. The date didn’t matter, with such a grand evening for hearing Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Delibes, Verdi and others with some top voices, including Grigorian, Sierra, Radvanovsky and Jagde seeming to have fun while giving their all.

Lincoln Center Theater’s new Kenny Leon production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS, presented in association with the Metropolitan Opera, is hardly “A Charlie Brown Christmas” or “The Nutcracker.” Yet it manages to give us faith, hope and charity at a time we could all use more than a little of it, though there doesn’t seem to be much of a nod by director Leon to the setting of “The Present” mentioned in the Playbill.

When I read that the Met, in the program notes for James Robinson’s production of PORGY AND BESS, called it “a supremely American operatic masterpiece” I couldn’t help but think of Stephen Sondheim’s answer (perhaps apocryphal) when he was asked whether SWEENEY TODD was an opera or a musical: “If it’s done in a theatre, it’s a musical; if it’s in an opera house, it’s an opera.”

For those of us who like verismo opera—combining the raw emotions of everyday people with historical splendor—but have heard one too many BOHEMEs, TOSCAs, TURANDOTs and BUTTERFLYs in this lifetime, noting Giordano’s ANDREA CHENIER in the Met’s repertoire for this season seemed like a godsend. Not seen in these parts since 2014, this tale of the French Revolution, a poet (the title role, sung by tenor Piotr Beczala) and blinding love set to a sweeping score was something to look forward to.

For all those operagoers tired of classics set in rodeos, Las Vegas or on a space station (Paris has a BOHEME of that ilk), Otto Schenk’s production for ARABELLA, with stage design by Gunther Schneider Siemssen, dating back to 1983, will be a relief. It features a return to “old Vienna,” including an Act II ballroom scene that’s as welcoming as a sacher torte.

Some of the audience at the chamber concert at the Frick Collection Museum—that jewel-box museum of art from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century on New York’s Upper East Side—had fought its way there through the runners of the NYC Marathon. What they found was definitely worth the effort: an unusual, early 17th century performance piece, of a kind, THE MASQUE OF BLACKNESS, showcasing the star bass-baritone Davone Tines and the museum’s ensemble-in-residence, Sonnambula.

It’s hard for a soprano to get a break in Donizetti’s LA FILLE DU REGIMENT, which I caught up with at the Met on Friday evening. Not that Marie—the role of the title, sung at the Met by Erin Morley—doesn’t have some gorgeous music and shenanigans to show off her musical and comic chops in the now-classic Laurent Pelly production.

It’s World Opera Day—an annual event held on October 25—a collaboration between OPERA America, Opera Europa, and Ópera Latinoamérica to showcase the ways opera companies and artists add vigor to their countries, communities and the world.

How did the martyrs—those Christians and otherwise who have been put to death or endured great suffering defending their beliefs, principles, or causes—meet their ends? As told through Douglas AA Balliett’s MARTYRS & RELICS, which played a handful of performances this week as its world premiere in the crypt of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, it all depends on the source you use.

Sometimes great singing can save a bad production. It happened with the Met’s previous attempt at Bellini’s LA SONNAMBULA, which had been DOA at its premiere, despite a star, cast but rose like a phoenix when it was revived with other stars a year later. This time around, in the misguided, often silly take under the direction of the former tenor Rolando Villazon, soprano Nadine Sierra tried her considerable best as Amina to bring it to life but Villazon was a problem that her great singing couldn’t totally surmount.

Mozart’s DON GIOVANNI was one of my first operas and remains among my favorites, despite its misogyny and the difficulty in putting together the kind of cast that can do justice to the string of show-stoppers in the score. The season's premiere of the opera had much to admire.

Anyone familiar with Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prizer-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY must be a bit bewildered at how a 700-page novel could be turned into a 3-hour opera. Or, for that matter, how a superhero named “The Escapist” could be sharing a stage this week with Puccini’s Turandot and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

The forces behind the Met’s latest try at bringing a different (sic: younger) audience to the house, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, joined forces at the Guggenheim’s Works & Process series last week to introduce the new work to a receptive crowd. It’s the story of two Jewish cousins who team up in Brooklyn to create a comic book superhero, called the Escapist, to fight Hitler and the forces of fascism, “a story that unfortunately has extra resonance right now,” according to Met General Manager Peter Gelb. It brings three sound worlds--traditional, swing and electronica--to the Met’s season-opener.

Maestro Karen Kamensek opened the Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra’s concert at Geffen Hall—“Paris to Patagonia”—with some interesting introductory remarks that almost sounded like an audition for the Philharmonic’s storied Young People’s Concerts. While fascinating in their own way, they didn’t quite prepare us for what the program really had in store for us.

Though Bedrich Smetana’s DALIBOR—seen this week at Bard SummmerStage in a wonderful production by Jean-Romain Vesperini, with an ingenious set design by Bruno de Lavenere, a fine cast and the American Symphony Orchestra in impeccable form under Leon Botstein—was reputedly the composer’s favorite among his eight operas, it was a failure at its opening in Prague in 1868. There was never a fully staged production in this country until this current one. (I saw the July 30 matinee.)

“Timeless Transformations” is a key theme of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center’s season at Geffen Hall this year (itself transformed from Avery Fisher Hall and, earlier, Philharmonic Hall). It certainly ran rampant last weekend, as British conductor Dame Jane Glover led the orchestral musicians and some bright soloists through their paces in works by Michael Abels (via Vivaldi), Tchaikovsky and Mozart.