Sunday, February 7, 2010

Count the High Cs as Juan Diego Florez Stars in the Met's Saturday Matinee Broadcast



Juan Diego Flórez stars in Gaetano Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment, the Saturday matinee broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera on February 13. Classic 99.1 KFUO-FM will carry the broadcast beginning at 12:00 noon (CT). Approximate running time is 2 hours, 44 minutes.

From the Met's web site:
New king of the high Cs Juan Diego Flórez reprises his headline-grabbing performance in the comic hit from the 2007–08 season. Diana Damrau makes her Met role debut as Marie. Kiri Te Kanawa returns to the Met stage in the speaking role of the Duchess of Krakenthorp. A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; and the Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna.

Vivien Schweitzer, in the February 7 edition of theNew York Times, points out that the role of "the Duchess of Krakenthorp is usually a spoken part. But a mere cameo role with a few lines would have been a miserly way for Kiri Te Kanawa, now 65, to make what may be her farewell to the house, where she has not sung in an opera since 1998." According to Schweitzer
The role was beefed up for Ms. Te Kanawa with extra dialogue, including lines like "Sweetheart, don’t be stingy with the Dom Pérignon." She entered at the beginning of Act II and sang the tune of the orchestral prelude, then a sultry rendition of Ginastera’s "Canción al Arbol del Olvido" ("Song of the Tree of Forgetting").

No comments:

Post a Comment