Woman composer opens Metropolitan Opera season
OperaMuch fuss is being made around Jeanine Tessori’s ‘Grounded’ which launched the Met’s season with a gala premiere last night, the first woman composer to occupy the first-night slot.
The opera is a cut-down version of the work that had a run of six performances at the Kennedy Center a year ago.
About 45 minutes have been cut and ten minutes of new music added. Music director Yannick was unsure of the changes: “I was kind of defending the composer as we would do today if Verdi was alive or Donizetti: ‘The music is perfect as it is. Let’s not cut,’” Nézet-Séguin said. “It was fascinating to see that the composer herself was more like: `No, this needs to be cut because it’s detracting from what I want in the story line.’”
Fellow-Canadian Emily D’Angelo sang the title role.
Reviews to follow.
Is this the best the Met can do for opening night?
Apparently.
But at least it was tested, in Washington, before the full resouces of the Met were thrown behind it. The big houses should never be incubators.
This composer used to write musicals: Violet (1997), a hit; The First Picture Show (1999), a flop; and Shrek the Musical (2008).
Then somehow she mastered opera: Blue (2019) and now Gounded (2023).
You left out her most critically acclaimed works in musical theater: Caroline, or Change (Drama Desk award for outstanding music), Fun Home (Tony for original score), and Kimberly Akimbo (Tony for original score). Thoroughly Modern Millie also received Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations. In addition to working with Tony Kushner on Caroline, or Change, they wrote an opera together which premiered in 2011 at Glimmerglass, and another of her operas was produced by Washington National Opera in 2013. She’s composed incidental music for several productions with The Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park. She also has arranged music for several Broadway reviews and revivals.
She hasn’t ‘somehow mastered opera,’ she’s talented and been composing in opera and adjacent genres for her entire career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frJdu3hYpb8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx3KhKfA3kw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jLmqFqYqCM
Opera writing? Confusion of terms….
Mastered?
have you heard anything by her?
Alas, yes…
The lament of the goners….
Just like Gershwin — musicals to opera!
Gershwin had talent.
Long story…
Have you seen it yet? What makes you the authority to throw off a one-liner that gets lots of upvotes? Oh, right. It’s this: She’s a woman and you’re of the belief that only dead white males should be heard in American opera houses in 2024.
Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cnKr2Ejw1U
As far as I’m concerned, the music sounds as meant for simpletons, not expressive but illustrative, and a production needs its success from staging, plot, singers.
Probably it is very nice for many people.
Thanks for the link. It is not possible to judge from such a short extract, the whole picture is needed. However, to me the extract sounds as if Andrew Lloyd Webber took Peter Grimes as basis.
Yes, and did not make a good use of it.
So mediocre…
Regardless of the music itself, it’s good to see D’Angelo’s career progressing.
Never heard of this lady before. But you lost me with your opening phrase, which is not one I care to see associated with the season opening of one of the world’s premier opera houses. Their regard should be first and foremost on “the music itself.”
That is, setting aside the issue of the quality of the music, I am glad that D’Angelo is doing well. She’s a great singer. Your dismissive “this lady,” suggests some problem on your part.
I acknowledged that I had never heard of the artist. The term “lady” is considered respectful where I grew up, and the “this” is simply an identifying qualifier. The ignorance of her work is mine.
My cavil was with your suggestion that the music did not matter as long as the artist got ahead. It struck, and strikes, me as lopsided when we are discussing the opening night of the Met season, where I still maintain that the quality of the music presented is more important than the career path of Ms. D’Angelo.
Amen! But that’s opera today: a new work picks a topic that will grab one’s attention [oooh drones! Exciting!] and then special effects are used.This is supposed to mask the fact that the composer is mediocre. Who cares that tye composer is a woman? Big deal. How about choosing a better opera? The Met is desperate.
I saw the Washington production, and in my memory the music is overwhelmed by the razzle-dazzle effects.
The mediocre music was masked by the effects.
I give it a praise! With these new ones, I hope Met won’t do the Regietheater productions on the classical repertoire as they did on Carmen.
Mediocre new works by sub-standard composers are not the solution to Euro-trash productions of great works. The Met loses either way, as is their wont.
I watched that trailer, because I had to dry my nails, and I think women should not write those opera things the way men do. All that soldier stuff and fighting and men around, that is boy scout things, imitation man world. We should do it more romantically, more fluffy, and something with animals, and with a bit of fun woven into it. I could do it, if I had some free time!
Sally
If you’re looking for romantic and fluffy with animals, try Mondonville’s Titon et L’Aurore.
You mean cute animal operas like the “Cunning Little Vixen”? It was written by a man.
Love it!!
I think this opera should have been grounded. Indeed, any work from this talentless woke hack should be grounded.
As for the brainless music director, he needs a to be schooled on what good music is.
Don Fanculo speaks again
The correct spelling is F.A.N.C.I.U.L.L.O.
But Don Fanciullo makes no sense. Try to learn another language before you speak, will you Sarah?
Perhaps Nézet-Séguin is buying time as ge tries to learn the standard repertoire? James Levine, where art thou???
In hell.
Going to the opera now is like being trapped in a screen saver.
Yawnick once again proving his worth.
He’s overrated and overpaid.
Why complaining? The lad wants to be of his time, up-to-date, and will do whatever it takes. And with some luck, he may bump into something worthwhile in one way or another, along the line, with some effort.
Total trash composition that will have a few performances…. everyone will speak of its great impact, and it will land on a library shelf never to be performed again. Thankfully.
It’s a great showcase for D’Angelo. A refreshing opener. Finally we have moved on from the park and bark brigade who are lauded with so much clouded nostalgia.
Gee, Officer Krupke — Krup You!
Don Ciccio: “I think this opera should have been grounded. Indeed, any work from this talentless woke hack should be grounded.”
——–
Politics plays a bigger – or even bigger – role in today’s world of culture. Race, age, gender, sexuality, ideology may either help or not help a person.
Opera is already seen by some as an odd art form, originating from what was meant to be vocal exercising. So the style is quite mannered and naturally kind of bellow-y.
If Jeanine Tessori wrote ear-worm-type opera, but her politics leaned in a certain direction (so-called woke or non-woke), various people either might like her even more or other people might not care about her even more.
Opening night should be a popular curtain raiser if you want to bring in the bucks from the philistines who don’t want to sit through an untrested 21st Century opera. Gelb on a DEI mission again and it has not helped him with any performance in that realm.