The Met, still without orchestra, flags up bleak rehearsal picture
NewsWhile no deal has yet been struck for the orchestra’s return to work, the Met is pumping up a chorus rehearsal.
Rehearsals are well underway for the Met premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which opens the 2021–22 season next month. Members of the production’s chorus have been busy rehearsing with the Met’s extraordinary Chorus Master, Donald Palumbo.
It further announces that Opening Night of the 2021–22 season will be a historic occasion—the Met’s first performance of an opera by a Black composer.
This is the definition of a racist post. Please stop fanning the flames of racism and report on the news.
I’m afraid I don’t understand how “this is the definition of a racist post,” or how it “fans the flames of racism,” or how it isn’t “news.”
Suddenly, the Met tix are sold out as the American BIPOC community wholeheartedly embraces western art music. The decision to stage an opera by a BIPOC composer was indeed the straw that broke the camel’s back! Hooray for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion!
BIPOC artists should invent their own art form and stop leeching off white man’s inventions. Classical music was invented by white males. Bach and Gluck are considered founders of the Classical style. The first great master of the style was Joseph Haydn. In the late 1750s he began composing symphonies, and by 1761 he had composed a triptych (Morning, Noon, and Evening) solidly in the contemporary mode.
This is verbatim repetition from your comments in an earlier post, as well as being blatantly racist.
Jazz was ‘invented’ by Black people. Ravel, Debussy, Gershwin, Stravinsky et al. cheerfully leeched off it. No doubt they are to be condemned, by your apartheid criterion.
Jazz is americas export.
Apart from Hershey chocolate.
Jazz is america,s best export.
Talking of Haydn: Joseph Bologne, a Black man, conducted leading Parisian orchestras in the 1770s and 1780s, and was involved in commissioning six symphonies from Haydn (the Paris Symphonies, 82-87), which were first performed by Le Concert Olympiaque, of which Bologne was director and conductor. Another Black man, George Bridgetower, was the son of a servant of the Esterhazy Prince Nikolaus I, and was brought up in the Esterhazy court until about the age of 10, during the time that Haydn was Kapellmeister. He learnt the violin, presumably from a member of Haydn’s orchestra, and later became a virtuoso violinist, celebrated throughout Europe. You may have heard the story of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, first performed by him.
21st-century USA should learn something from 18th-century Europe.
That should be Le concert olympique. Ouch.
Just as soon as white musicians return jazz to its inventors.
Some of the white jazz musicians
Gerry mulligan. Buddy rich. Zoot sims
Were very good.
No one is questioning the abilities of white jazz musicians, any more than we’re questioning the tremendous contributions of black opera singers. The difference is that many black opera singers had and still have more difficulty making a career. Despite the uneven playing field, opera is better for their accomplishments.
A great voice is a great voice is a great voice.
Alexander Davenport’s ranting above is a thoroughly repulsive white supremacist post (particularly the “leeching off” language) and does not belong on a site dedicated to beauty and culture of civilized human beings (a group in which KKK members and Nazis by definition do not belong). In fact Black people are celebrated worldwide for their incredible musical and theatrical culture of Jazz, Blues, Dance, Theatre etc. etc. to which much “white music” (including Rock and Roll, Country and Western music, Broadway etc.) is most thoroughly indebted.
You should retreat to your own private island with other white supremacists. The rest of us civilized people have already evolved enough as human beings that you’ll never be able to catch up…
Terence Blanchard is one of the leading jazz artists of modern times and has composed over 40 film scores, including several by one of the greatest filmmakers of modern times: Spike Lee. By what standard is the leading American opera house commissioning and performing an opera on a relevant contemporary issue by such a figure a bad thing? Yes, it’s inclusion because America has people with such stories to tell.
Hi there – actually the opera was commissioned and first performed at Opera Theatre of St Louis. The MET will ha e Terrence in attendance and James Robinson as director, who did and curated the premiere
Yeah, unlikely to attend. Super-spreader event with the D variant running rampant.
That’s always what there is in mid-August. A meaningless shot, and typically idiotic for the place to point it out. Just amazing to me that DP is still somehow rising to the always-increasioning occasion.
They’re singing through masks? How idiotic is that? Singing muzzled dogs. Imagine the amount of spike protein shedding in that room. Masks don’t keep you from catching or transmitting covid. The amount of air is the same coming in and out, regardless. The virus is too tiny to be filtered by masks. And viruses can be absorbed by the eyes so masks are useless.
Stop breathing your own exhaust people, masks are meant to make you sick, not the other way around! And the effects on your body after just 3 mins of restricted oxygen and toxic levels of C02 from wearing a mask are detrimental. Headaches caused by blood oxygenation (hypoxia), elevation in blood C02 (CO2 poisoning, hypercapnia) then the effects become more serious. Masks trap the virus inside, increase your heart rate, your blood pressure and deplete your immune system. But some people would rather suffocate than accept that masks are USELESS!
God, you’re an idiot.
Alexander, just in case anyone missed it, you have revealed yourself to be an idiot, as a matter of fact not as an opinion. “The virus is too tiny to be filtered by masks”, yet “Masks trap the virus inside”. A perfect example of mutually exclusive statements and you cannot have it both ways.
Your post taken as a whole is utter drivel…
…and your post near the top of the comments is shameful.
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt”
The Met’s Grand Inquisitor, I mean, “Chief Diversity Officer” must be proud. Unfortunately, the Met has a long history of premiering awful new works. I would pass on this one even if the Met hadn’t turned into a hive of leftwing extremism.
I’m unsure what the problem is here
PETER GELB MUST GO! Gelb is incompetent, always has been and has effectively destroyed the MET because of his incompetence and ego. The MET is an organic whole, stars, orchestra, chorus, crew, support but it does not need the high priced useless administration. FIRE GELB! SAVE THE MET.
Kathleen, if their board agreed with you, they would have asked for his resignation many years ago.
Will Yannick be there if and when the orchestra agrees to a settlement?
Does the color of the composers skin really matter? Does the fact that composers of all colors and nationalities still write in the shadow of the classicists? Who are we to decide who should compose what? If you want to listen to the music, do so, if not, STFU.
Orchestra rehearsals typically start the week after labor day, according to the 2 seasons’ block schedules I have on hand.
Has anyone else looked at the advance sales for the fall? Rows and rows (and rows) of empty $250+ seats throughout; an unpeopled family circle. Is the MET about to go bankrupt regardless of settling with the orchestra?
Why a bleak rehearsal picture??? It’s a partial shot of a room of singers, all socially distanced–and working.
Bleak? Do we know how large of a chorus is required for Fire Up in My Bones?
Hardly bleak. Hopeful, perhaps.
Is your glass always half full?
His glass is always nearing empty.