A Gotham-Weimar Operetta Feast

Baden-Baden 1927 by Gotham Chamber Opera

October 26, 2013 - The Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay College    

Image credit: Georg Baselitz / Gotham Chamber Opera

Gotham Chamber Opera opened its season by taking a fresh look at four one-act operettas first presented at the Baden-Baden Festival of Contemporary Music on July 17, 1927. The quality and caliber of the production were sensational by any standards and even more so for a company of this size. Mixed media techniques were deployed. Live camera recordings were projected on stage in ways that heightened the drama. The stage was transformed into a massive multipurpose art gallery with paintings by German neo-expressionist artist Georg Baselitz. The costumes were playful and cohesive. Paul Curran’s direction was consistently clever and inventive. In short, it was a refreshing contemporary take on material that was avant-garde in 1927. It is always a pleasure and a privilege to be in the presence of such talent and vision.

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Each opera was introduced by a different singer who interacted with the public and gave a playful take on each piece. This served both as entertainment during the set changes and also as live production notes. Creating a mise-en-abyme, by placing one form of art inside the other, and posing the overarching question: “What is Art?”, these touches of immersion-theatrical techniques sought to involve the audience, from questions on the plots to on-stage commentary during intermission to the selection of a reluctant dance partner for the two female characters in the last operetta.

Image credit: Gotham Chamber Opera

Though they were doing a lot, they made it all look very simple. After having been so impressed with Gotham's site-specific production of Eliogabalo at the Box (that made our 2012-13 highlights list), the full-on theatrical professionalism on display here was really on a whole other level. The music was electrifying; Neal Goren’s conducting was crisp and dynamic. In many ways it reminded me of Shostakovich, not surprisingly given that these works premiered only three years before The Nose. Helen Donath (soprano), Maeve Höglung (soprano), John Cheek (bass), Matthew Tuell (tenor), Daniel Montenegro (tenor), Michael Mayes (baritone), Jennifer Rivera (mezzo) formed an impressive cast, with top-notch and high-energy singing and acting. All of the singers commanded attention on stage each in their own unique way, evidently having a lot of fun in the process.

On the specific operettas:

Darius Milhaud's L’Enlèvement d’Europe (The Abduction of Europa) is perhaps the shortest opera I have ever seen, at only 8 minutes. The concept of Zeus coming out of a painting (and wearing a camoflaged suit matching the patterns of the painting) was genius. In just a few brushstrokes, the production team was able to communicate the idea of the rapturous power of the divine emerging from a work of art (or is it the other way around?) and seducing a glamorous Europa, with a chorus of little-black-dress gallerinas commenting on the action. It was a slice of Chelsea and a modern spin on a classic myth that made a whole lot of sense.  

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Ernst Tosch's Die Prinzessin Auf Der Ersbe (The Princess and the Pea) was my least favorite portion of the evening. In an effort revamp the original piece, the production took it in a reality-TV direction that I always have a hard time stomaching, even if, as in this case, it is used as social satire. The techniques employed, however, were visually very effective. A live feed of footage being filmed by cameramen buzzing about the stage was projected onto the elaborate sets themselves. The whole thing was very busy but also very carefully choreographed. Kaleidoscopic psychedelia: achieved!

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Paul Hindemith's Hin Und Zuruck (There and Back) was the most delightful of the four for me. It was a perfect little package with a narrative of love, betrayal, murder, suicide, and an Andy Warhol deus-ex-machina that rewinds the story, palindrome-style, to a happy ending: the beginning. Very clever realization with parallel projections of the story running forward while the actors are in the process of unfolding the action in reverse.

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Kurt Weill's collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, the Mahagonny Songspiel, was certainly the most famous and recognizable piece of the evening. Its absurd surrealism came across with a zany sense of Weimar-era humor, and the singers lit up the stage with a startlingly fresh take on the classic "Moon of Alabama Song" that has been covered by such acts as the Doors, David Bowie and Nina Simone. As is to be expected, the whole thing was crazy, allegorical quasi-nonsense, although very entertainingly so.

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

Photo Credit: Richard Termine

An extremely satisfying evening at the theater. Makes you think that the spot left by NYC Opera has already been filled by this vibrant, visionary and virtuosic independent company. Especially since a little more than a year ago NYC Opera fleshed out this same space to much less elaborate use with Christopher Alden's monotone and monochrome production of Così fan tutte.

Baden-Baden 1927 was an impressive display of creative power, innovative thinking and top-notch execution by Gotham Chamber Opera. This company showed it has the means and vision to bring some high quality fresh air into NYC’s opera scene. Eagerly awaiting their next shows this season, I am particularly intrigued by the site-specific production of Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda in the armor room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 26 and 27, 2014.

Gotham Chamber Opera, what you do to me, I want done forever!

– Lei & Lui

The Fascist, the Singer and her Lover

Puccini's Tosca at the Met

November 2, 2013

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera

Lei: This is the tale of Tosca, a fiery brunette (complexion becomes an important plot point), who also just happens to be an opera singer, and her lover Cavaradossi, a tormented painter. Together they suffer the hardships of an oppressive regime, represented by Scarpia, an evil (and perverted) secret police chief. The painter is working on a portrait of Mary Magdalene that depicts a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty and causes Tosca to throw a jealous fit, demanding proof of his fidelity – though it seems like her jealousy is part of the couple’s dynamic since they are otherwise profusely lovey-dovey. Politically, Cavaradossi is opposed to the regime in power and helps a fugitive friend in his escape from prison. Enter the evil police chief who suspects the painter and lusts creepily after the singer. From here on, the action only heats up, and violently so. By the beginning of Act Two, the police have captured the painter who refuses to betray his fugitive friend.

The Fascist Scarpia and his three "Graces"
Photo credit: Mary Altaffer

Lui: Though the opera is originally set in Rome 1800, the police chief's study in Act Two of this production is taken directly out of Bernardo Bertolucci's World War II-era thriller, Il Conformista, and so this Tosca is given a decidedly camicia nera, fascism-in-Italy spin. While prostitutes lounge about in various states of undress, the evil chief of police, dressed in fascist black overcoat and vest, paces to-and-fro meditating on how to act on the latest object of his desire. Scarpia is a perverse sexual predator. He ends up fitting the fascist stereotype even in this regard.

Photo credit: Marty Sohl / The Metropolitan Opera

Lei: Scarpia then has the singer come over while his henchmen torture her lover in the next room so she can hear his excruciating cries of pain. Tosca cannot stand it and divulges the escapee's whereabouts. As a result, the painter is condemned to a public hanging for his anti-regime activities. The perverted police chief proposes a deal to the devastated singer: if she lets him use her body for a "quickie" (literally, he says “a te chieggio un istante”), he’ll save the painter by arranging a mock shooting in lieu of a hanging. The singer reluctantly agrees but also very fortuitously finds a knife lying around and, when the evil police chief is about to rape her, she stabs him to death.

Patricia Racette was a fine Tosca with good acting presence, however her singing left me lukewarm, no shivers whatsoever. George Gagnizde’s Scarpia was also acceptable but lacked the cruelty required by the role, both vocally and acting-wise. I think Dmitri Hvorostovsky would make a magnificent Scarpia – now that would be a believable villain (although based on a 2007 interview it sounded like Dmitri was not willing to tackle it quite yet).

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera

Lui: Act Three opens beautifully with a subdued orchestral prelude. All of a sudden the melancholic voice of a shepherd boy pierces the scene sending tingles through the house. I was blown away by the sheer beauty of Puccini's orchestral atmospherics. Cavaradossi maintains the "cold dawn" mood of the opening as we find out that he going to give his ring – his last worldly possession – to the guard in exchange for the promise that his last letter will reach his beloved Tosca. The whole scene remains introspective when he breaks into "E lucevan le stelle." He is destitute. He has been imprisoned, mistreated, tortured. He is a bruised-up, bloody mess, and he is about to be executed. In thinking of his true love, he remembers their one big liaison in the park after dark. This is the pain of a man who has been beaten down, who is left with nothing, wanting only to relive one of life's fleeting joys: the unexpected spiritual exaltation of physical intimacy with another person. 

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera

This aria is without a doubt the climax of the whole opera, I would argue, its raison d'être. And it is not necessarily an aria in the strict traditional sense. There is no refrain, no repetition, no songy progression. It is pure poetry – a beautifully sustained single crescendo of raw emotion that departs from the sensory experience of beauty, as it is impressed on the memory, and that soars on eagle's wings to the heartfelt recognition that life never got any better than that moment, though its upward flight is stunted by the realization that now all he has to look forward to is his time to die: "Muoio disperato." It is melancholic, bittersweet, and I tingle still at just the thought of hearing it sung live in its narrative context. And this is where Roberto Alagna really stole the show. He took the emotions exactly where they needed to go. It was some of the best singing I've heard from a tenor at the Met in recent memory. It is moments like these that justify my love of the medium. It's everything that matters in life boiled down to three minutes of poetry and feeling expressed through music.

Lei: I am generally not a Roberto Alagna fan. While technically capable and powerful, I usually find his tone not deep or warm enough and at times even fake, as though he does not really mean what he's singing. Nevertheless, in his Act Three embodiment of Cavaradossi’s “E lucevan le stelle” he proved me wrong, showcasing the raw desperate emotion of a man about to die, remembering and longing for the woman he loves. I cried copiously.

Tosca then runs to the imprisoned painter to explain the deal she cut for him, all while providing some theatrical advice on how to feign death when fake-shot. Unfortunately, the singer should have known better than to trust the word of an evil (and perverted) police chief, since the execution turns out to be a very real one, with the painter actually being shot to death by firing squad. The singer cannot believe how utterly evil and untrustworthy the police chief was and, when trapped by his henchmen, she jumps to her death.

Photo credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

I am not a Puccini person. I generally find his operas too cheesy and unnecessarily sappy, with plots that are not complex enough to make the drama of the music really credible. I mean, it’s too bad that Cio-Cio-San is cheated by that colonialist pig Pinkerton and that Mimi dies of tuberculosis, but tragedies like these are simply not intricate enough for my operatic taste. I like works with over-the-top multiple layers of dynamic dramatic tension. Maybe verismo is just not for me. Tosca, however, is a possible exception to my Puccini aversion, and it may be because (at least in Acts Two and Three) it is action packed with several extreme situations that justify the dramatic outbursts of the score.

Lui: After finally seeing Tosca for the first time, I now see clearly the link between Italian neo-realism and Puccini's brand of operatic verismo. I have long been aware of the fact that there is very little raw "realism" to the plotlines of so-called "neo-realist" Italian cinema. Although shot on a shoestring with non-professional actors, the films of Roberto Rossellini and company, nevertheless, have more in common with melodrama.  And this production at the Met emphasized many of these parallels. Seeing that Puccini wrote these harrowing scenes of brute institutional force, political violence and torture in the year 1900, this production demonstrates how he beat Rossellini and the neo-realists of the post-war period to the punch by nearly half a century. The torture and subsequent execution scene are the obvious forerunners to the climax of Roma città aperta and are no less grueling.

Scarpia's Study, Act II
Photo credit: Ken Howard / The Metropolitan Opera

Lei: I saw this Luc Bondy production at the 2011 season opening performance and back then I found it unconventionally interesting, however today I think I may have been blinded by the gala excitement as, after seeing it again, I felt it was really hit and miss. While Tosca does not necessarily have to be a Zeffirellian baroque extravaganza, it does need to give the audience something to engage with. And I think this production takes a “period-minimalist” route that does not always work and is generally so dimly lit that I had to squint through my opera glasses to figure out the sets. While I get the concept that the action takes place in obscure tyrannical times, a little more light would have been good, both for the staging and the eyes of the audience. The first act is all set in the transept of a dark no-frills brick church that it’s just bland, and also historically at odds with the Caravaggio-style painting Cavaradossi is working on. Also, the “Te Deum” scene at the end of the first act just did not work. It is supposed to be a moment of contrast between choral religious fervor and Scarpia’s devilish attitudes, however, in this production the worshipers and the clergy were walking along the transept, behind Scarpia, almost following him, while in a more credible rendition (at least by Roman Catholic standards), the chorus should proceed along the nave of the church, towards the altar, with Scarpia left in the back, scheming his wrongdoings.

The Te Deum scene in Franco Zeffirelli's Tosca at the Met in 1999
Photo credit: Ruby Washington / The New York Times

The Te Deum scene in Luc Bondy's Tosca in 2013
Photo credit: Andrea Mohin / The New York Times

The second act worked better and had some interesting off-libretto variations, such as the three prostitutes entertaining Scarpia while he explains his preference of brutal lust over romantic love (“Ha più forte / sapore la conquista violenta / che il mellifluo consenso”). The torture scene with the bloodstained door letting in a cone of light and Cavaradossi’s laments was also very effective.  

The sets of Act Three were just weird and felt almost incomplete, with an L-shaped fortress structure occupying less than a third of the stage, and the remainder of the space just empty green-black darkness with some streaks of white. If such parking-lot looking space was supposed to be the river Tiber, it was just not represented very vividly.

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera 

One thing that worked extremely well in Act Three, however, was the very last scene, where Tosca runs up the stairs escaping Scarpia’s henchmen and jumps off the ledge into the dark. This production shows Tosca’s full body actually leaning out of the tower at an angle that looked extremely credible, with the lights going to black while she’s almost mid-air, cinematographically freezing the sight of Tosca in her extreme suicidal gesture.

Lui: After a slow start in Act One, it was a chilling finale to an emotionally-intense last two acts.

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera

Unchaste Priestess, Beware!

Bellini's Norma at the Met
October 18, 2013

All photo credits: Met

Lei: An unchaste Druid priestess has a secret love affair with an enemy Roman soldier and bears his two children (that she hides from her Druid community). The Roman soldier gets tired of the priestess and cheats on her with her young disciple. The young slutty disciple confesses to the unchaste priestess her doubts about her own religious calling because of a love interest. When the priestess discovers that she is being cheated on, hell breaks loose (temporarily): she almost kills her kids to take revenge on the treacherous Roman soldier and unleashes the Druid army on the Romans. In the end, however, the priestess admits her own long-time double-faced unchaste conduct to her Druid community (including her baffled father) and voluntarily immolates herself on a pyre as human sacrifice to appease the gods. Once he sees what an extraordinary principled woman the priestess is, the treacherous Roman soldier falls back in love with her and joins her in the fire to die together in atonement. The slutty disciple regains her faith and the priestess’ baffled father agrees to take care of her soon-to-be orphaned children. Curtain.

Lui: Loosely following the main plot lines of the Medea, Norma transcends her source material in the most redeeming ways, mainly because she decides to spare her children and face her own death, which is what makes Norma a character of truly heroic dimensions. The emotional range of her role runs the gamut. She exudes the fortitude of an astute political and military strategist in "Sediziose voci"; the mystic melancholy of a powerful priestess in "Casta diva"; the all-too-human sadness of regret in "Oh! Rimembranza!"; the ability to forgive and forget in the name of feminine friendship in "Deh, con te, con te li prendi"; the sincere mercy of a truly loving mother in "Dormono entrambi"; and the violent conviction of a warrior in "Dammi quel ferro."

And so, Norma is a more heroic representation of a powerful female figure than Medea, albeit also an extremely tragic one. Both women go out in a blaze of glory. Having leveled her revenge and killed her children, the king and his daughter along the way, Medea takes her triumphant leave: a holy terror on Helios' flying chariot led by dragons. Having spared her children and owned up to her hypocrisy, Norma goes to meet her death triumphantly – a "sublime donna" with her sins redeemed and her integrity intact.

Lei: Operatic drama hardly gets more multi-layered than this. If one adds to that Bellini’s lively bel canto score dripping with with romantic passion and one of the most beautiful and challenging soprano "assoluta" roles ever written, it is surprising that Norma is not performed more often. This season there are only 6 fully staged productions of Norma being performed worldwide (New York Met, Knoxville, Paris, Toulon, Chemintz and Dusseldorf) and 3 concert performances (Lyon, Vienna and Budapest). If one does the same search with Traviata the results are over 50 (source: Opera Critic Search Suite). And that's not just because Traviata is standard repertoire and an all time public favorite, it's mostly that if one does not have a soprano capable of tackling the lead role, it just does not make sense to stage Norma at all.

Sondra Radvanovsky was impressive. The moment she started singing the air was transformed, not only because she was so powerful one could literally feel the air vibrating (even in family circle) but mostly because the sheer purity of the sound of her voice and her mastery of the technique and breadth of range required for this role were terrific. I saw Radvanovsky a couple of times before, in Trovatore and Ballo in Maschera and back then I thought she was technically very solid but lacked that extra warmth and sweetness to convey the emotional depth of her characters. That was not always the case in Norma, though I generally felt she was pretty composed and could maybe have unleashed some more emotion. I will be interested to see how she evolves in this role since she clearly showed she has the technique to carry it – and that, in itself, is a rarity.

Lui: Indeed, technically proficient but not enough emotion, however, I found myself transported by the power of this strong female lead. And Radvanovsky owned it. Her voice swooping and diving over the low droning chorus in "Casta diva" cast its spell on me. In my opinion she was in full possession of the stately solemnity of the role. More emotion would only help to round out what is such a refreshing female character. And Radvanovsky embodied all of Norma's transcendent strong feminine qualities with grace and self-assurance. I found her to be a thrill even with the stiffness and paucity of her emotional release.

Lei: Other singers did a fine job. I had mixed feelings about the tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko as Pollione, he went flat a couple of times in the first act but then got better and sang with warmth and a well rounded articulation, even if not that powerful. Kate Aldrich’s Adalgisa was not bad and her duets with Norma were lovely though next to Radvanovsky everybody else sounded pretty weak.

Lui: Though Radvanovsky carried the two spectacular duets between Norma and Adalgisa, these were, nevertheless, among the few moments in which Kate Aldrich as Adalgisa really shined. Their first duet, "Oh! Rimembranza!," is a tender moment of understanding and empathy that really highlights the feminine friendship and comraderie that lies at the center of the story. The musical texture of their interaction is rich and varied. Their voices rise and fall and break up into little staccato phrases, surging together and then apart. Dangling, a capella, out in the void, they sound both vulnerable but also intransigent, drawing strength off of one another. Little do they know at this point that they are both infatuated with the same man. In her earlier appearances in Act 1, singing on her own, I was less convinced by Aldrich's Adalgisa. If character is communicated through music and especially singing in opera, she did not seem to have the strength or the stature to be a believable contender for Pollione's affection opposite the sheer dynamism of Radvanovsky's Norma. It was just unclear what her Adalgisa had to offer that Norma was lacking.

Lei: Staging was some odd combination of sleek modern black walls and floors with a few ancient looking stone elements, such as the platform for the religious rites, the back wall of Norma's house and a giant disc with Druid-like decorations that descends from the ceiling when Norma unleashes the army in "Guerra, guerra!". The sets were not particularly visually engaging, other than a big moon changing shape and color in the background that reminded me of James Turrell's Aten Reign installation recently at the Guggenheim. True that the singing was all in all quite good and staging is secondary when that's the case, however this production could really benefit from some extra bright touches, it's very dark and even the costumes (except for Norma's blue and red outfits) are all pretty somber and almost disappear into the black sets. At a minimum, the Druids could use some white tunics so that the chorus appearance can match its musical liveliness and Adalgisa should definitely get rid of those old maid rags and wear some livelier color to emphasize the youth (and sluttiness) of her character.

Lui: John Copley's no frills production was a stark outing. Largely shrouded in darkness, the staging and set does little to distract from the music, and thank goodness because the singing in an opera like this one truly deserves to be the the main attraction. It does not matter much where you set the opera. Give me good singing and you can do whatever you want with the staging. 

A Nose on the Run!

Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Met – October 8, 2013

All photo/image credits: Met

Lui: Originally written between 1835 and 1836, Nikolai Gogol's short story The Nose is an absurdist whodunit fantasia, part bureaucratic thriller, part social satire, set in the same St. Petersburg as Pushkin's 1833 Eugene Onegin. Scouring the streets of the imperial Russian capital in search of his missing nose, Gogol's noseless protagonist Kovalyov could very well have crossed paths with Pushkin's cast of aristocratic characters, if it weren't for their difference in class. For, Kovalyov is hyper-aware of the hierarchies of Petersburg society.

William Kentridge's signature 2010 Met production of Shostakovich's 1930 operatic adaptation moves the action of the story to the St. Petersburg of the Soviet futurists in the early twentieth century. His staging features a profusion of paroliberismo, animation and live action video projected onto mobile set pieces, scrims, screens and curtains. The stage at the Met is a whirling frenzy of activity for virtually all of the swift hour and forty-five minutes of the modernist composer's fleet-footed score.

Lei: The terrific music was definitely the main character for me. The Met orchestra sounded more alive and electrified than ever under Gergiev’s lead, rendering Shostakovich’s score a pure and super-kinetic delight. I was so taken with the orchestra that I would have been content just with the music and Kentridge’s dada-futurist animations. These projections worked very well with the musical tempo and served both as part of the set and as narrative tool. The sequences where the human-size nose goes out and about, engaging in all sort of activities (from running and ballet dancing to typing and horseback riding) were just hilarious and conveyed perfectly the absurdity of the plot.

Lui: I tend to feel the same way. I could watch Kentridge's imagination riff on this material for a long time. It is so incredibly pleasurable. Still, the man at the center of the show is collegiate assessor Kovalyov (but you can call him "Major"), who is dramatically aware that the mysterious and absurd loss of his nose will doom his much desired escalation of the social ladder. In his adventures with and without his olfactory organ, Kovalyov measures himself up to everyone he encounters. He constantly scrutinizes the buttons on their uniforms, their noses, even their whiskers. When it turns out that his nose is on the loose and has somehow sprouted legs of its own and become as big as a man with a higher title than his, Kovalyov is suddenly unsure of how to address his superior. Perplexed before his nose – now State Councilor! – the Major comically struggles to convince it to resize and go back to where it belongs, on Kovalyov's face.

Lei: This production chose to display the confrontation between Kovalyov and his Nose as an exchange between two men, with a wobbly shadow of a nose projected onto the wall behind the higher ranked character. Rather, this should have been a confrontation between a man and his absurd overgrown nose. To me, this directorial choice missed the point entirely, especially since the big papier-mâché nose was always so effective throughout the rest of the opera. This is after all one of the key moments in the story that brings Kovalyov's complex to the fore. In the context of his bureaucratic and social insecurities, if he's talking to his nose we want to see a big nose, not a little man who sounds gracious, all too soft spoken and elegant. Also, tenor Alexander Lewis was not a convincing Nose, since he sounded too delicately high-pitched to the point of almost coming across as melancholic. I found this rendering to be at complete odds with the Nose’s character – a snob and brisk State Councilor who does not want to have anything to do with the lower-ranked Kovalyov.

 

Lui: Once his nose slips through his clutches, our dutiful civil servant then humorously weighs his bureaucratic options for seeking assistance in his plight – whether to file an appeal with the Board of Discipline, where the Nose now works, to take an ad out in the local newspaper or turn to the police. We are immersed in the world of protocol and arcane hierarchies. It is a satire of the corrupt inefficiencies of the bureaucratic chain of command, and it's outrageously surreal.

Lei: The staging conveys very vividly the dwarfing of man by the bureaucratic and social machine. In all the interior scenes (such as the barber shop, Kovalyov's apartment and the newspaper office) the action takes place in shoebox-like sets that occupy only a very small portion of the stage. The rest of the space is filled with projections of magnified newspaper articles and fast clips bursting with of all sorts of social choral situations, from crowds marching to clerks typing and audiences watching phantom shows of their own, with a terrific set-within-the-set effect.

Lui: It's rare to find an opera that so fully represents the social sphere in all its dynamic, overlapping layers. Shostakovich's score is bristling with frenetic energy and Kentridge brought it all to life. He gives us the crowds in the square, in the cathedral, in the park, at the newspaper office and in the police headquarters. Even poor Kovalyov's modest apartment is seething with social life as it is where scenes unfold with everyone from his live-in lackey, to the police commissioner, to a doctor living in the building who bursts in to make a house call. There is no privacy for our poor civil servant.

Another scene that really worked for me was the duet between Kovalyov and the mother of his some time love interest. The Major blames her for the loss of his nose and accuses her of witchcraft. The mother disregards the absurdity of the nonsensical accusation and reiterates the offer of her daughter's hand in marriage, should he still be so inclined. They exchange correspondence and sing the contents of their respective letters, one superimposed directly onto the other. Rather than achieving communicative clarity, the effect is a confusing hodgepodge of two people talking at and over one another. It is a piece of virtuosic genius the solution the composer comes up with to represent the social economy of their epistolary-marital commerce. Rather than give us the direct courting of the love interest through a seductive aria or a lovey-dovey duet, Shostakovich gives us a pushy mediator and turns the pseudo-love story into yet another negotiation straight from the sphere of the social.

Lei: The opera has lot of Russian recitatif, which was often quite funny given the absurdity of the story and the wittiness of the libretto; also, the subtitles were projected onto the set, sometimes even as part of the animations, which made the business of following the Russian fun and easy. Even so, after a while all the talking got a bit tiresome and I just craved some melody.

When it came to real singing, baritone Paulo Szot did a good job as Major Kovalyov, sounding powerful enough and displaying the comic vein required of the role. I also liked the musicality of Sergey Skorokhodov as the Major’s servant Ivan, who provided a rare moment of palpable emotion when he cozied up with a balalaika singing a simple folk ditty, showing the musical eclecticism of the visionary breadth of this opera. Barbara Dever as Mme. Podtochina and Ying Fang as her daughter brought some (at least for me) much-needed female melody to the piece, it was a relief to hear some soprano trilling after the prevailing manly Russian declamations. I was not particularly impressed by the rest of the singers, who many times were just so dwarfed by the music that it was just hard to hear them.

Lui: As one of the most experimental stagings that I've seen at the Met, it made me nostalgic for the kinds of cutting-edge productions NYC Opera has brought is over the last couple of years. Seeing The Nose made more poignant the imminent loss of the institution that brought us, for example, that visionary Moses in Egypt last year that won't soon be forgotten. Along with Satyagraha, The Nose ranks up there with the most unique operatic spectacles that I have experienced at the Met.

Lei: I am not sure The Nose it’s my piece of operatic cake, however I enjoyed it as an entertaining absurd futurist piece. And I very much look forward to seeing more Kentridge-like productions around.