Tag Archives: Met Live

Cendrillon (Met Live)

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  • Cendrillon (Met Live)

6/3/18 (Sun), Tokyo

Massenet’s utterly charming 1899 French take on the Cinderella story, making an overdue debut at the Met in a production by Laurent Pelly. While not as memorable musically as Rossini’s Cinderella opera Cenerentola, it is more whimsical, magical and fun. I had higher hopes for the score after the supremely melodic ballet version of Manon at the ROH just several weeks earlier, but that was a piece created long after Massenet’s death and stitched together from various of his works, presumably taking all the good parts. The only truly impressive musical moments this time were the second-half love duet and the fairy godmother’s vocal acrobatics. Even so, the virtues of the show came through in spades, especially in this light-hearted production. It’s strange that it took so long for the Met to get to this gem, especially as this is a ready-made production that has been around since 2006 with the same Cinderella; it shouldn’t have taken 12 years to decide on this, much less nearly 120 years.

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The Exterminating Angel (Met Live)

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  • The Exterminating Angel (Met Live)

1/29/18 (Mon), Tokyo

British composer Thomas Adès’ new opera, based on the 1962 Buñuel film, was a big popular and critical success in Salzburg, London and New York, and I was eager to catch this Met Live production from last November. The source film, which I had somehow never seen, happened to be playing in Tokyo at a retrospective of Buñuel’s Mexican works, so I caught that the night before.

The story, a Beckett-like setup where fancy guests at a dinner party find themselves mysteriously unable to leave the room, didn’t seem a promising subject for a full opera. For one thing, it’s largely an ensemble piece with no real leads, less about individual characters than the breakdown of the social order and how people behave in extreme situations. The film wraps up in a brisk 90 minutes or so, suggesting that a one-act opera might be more appropriate. (That appears to be the approach that Stephen Sondheim and David Ives are taking in their musical version, which will combine this film with that other Buñuel dinner-party piece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.) The fact that this all takes place largely within the confines of a single room with the same costuming throughout also doesn’t suggest much in the way of scale or glamour. In any event, I was curious to see what Adès and his co-librettist Tom Cairns would make of this.

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