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With the rest of the opera season canceled – everywhere – The Met has been offering free nightly streams of operas previously recorded for their HD broadcasts. Scheduling time for an opera in front of the TV is in some ways harder than making time to attend a performance, but on Sunday, April 5, I finally blocked out an afternoon for my own Sunday matinee stream of Norma by Bellini.
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It was a miracle I made it to see Charlie Parker’s Yardbird at Seattle Opera at all. First of all, black operas are rarely performed by major opera companies. I didn’t have advance tickets, and on opening weekend I was home sick with a flu-like virus. I got mixed up the next weekend and showed up on the day that there wasn’t a matinee (big oof). But I finally made it for the very last performance of the run – only a few days before all big arts performances were shut down due to the pandemic. So was it worth all that effort?
Yes and no.
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Seattle Opera announced their new season really early this year. Coincidentally, I happened to be on their website that day and saw the new line-up before the press release even hit my inbox. I didn’t get around to writing about it until now, but not for lack of enthusiasm. It’s going to be an interesting season.
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Once again, I almost didn’t go to the opera. I was on a deadline and hadn’t been feeling well all weekend. A finished draft and a nap sounded better than getting dressed and leaving the house. But I had never seen a Russian opera before, and I knew I liked Tchaikovsky’s music, and Sunday was the only day I could possibly go. So I dragged myself to McCaw Hall and thoroughly enjoyed every one of the 190-some minutes of the matinee performance; then couldn’t fall asleep that night for thinking about Eugene Onegin.
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Few opera composers are as well-loved (especially at my house) as Rossini, and everyone loves a fairy tale. Rossini’s opera is actually named La Cenerentola, which is a mouthful. If it’s easier, he also called it Goodness Triumphant. But it’s a good idea to use one of these names rather than the more familiar one, because Rossini’s Cinderella is not Disney’s Cinderella. And the “long ago in a land far away” of Seattle Opera’s Cenerentola is Dickensian London.
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