This year the Lyric Opera (of Chicago) is doing Iphigenie et Tauride, Turandot, Salome, Il Travatore, Romeo et Juliette, Die Fledermaus, Cosi Fan Tutte, and Dialogues of the Carmelites. I have been subscribing to the Lyric for about 10 years, and they always have great seasons. I don’t know very much about opera, but this one seems a little weak to me. I am not looking forward to it nearly as much as I have precious seasons, but still quite a bit, it’s opera after all.
The only problem I have with this is that I have already seen both Turandot and Tavatore. I’ve listened to Cosi on CD and liked it. It is one of the ones I’m looking forward to.
Heh, when I was skimming the preview before I openend the thread, I tought “What a great season!” Diff’rent strokes, I guess, but Salome, Turandot and Trovatore in a single would get me really interested. (Plus, Salome has nudity!) Cosi Fan Tutti has lovely music and it’s sort of charming and funny, although the story isn’t strong enough to fill the time alloted. Of course, some opera fans find the story completely secondary to what they enjoy about opera; I am not one of those people.
When the lovely Mrs.cliffy and I saw Cosi at the Washington Opera some years ago, they did the curtain calls with the “Albanians” back in their original costumes as gentlemen, and the guy in front of us leaned over to hiw wife and asked “What about the other two guys?” Ferrando and Guglielmo not only managed to fool their girlfriends, they fooled this audience member as well.
I think I may have given the wrong impression. I did not mean to imply that I was unhappy with the season, only that I thought it was a slightly weaker season than some of the others I have attended. For comparison, here are the cast lists from the 2000 through the 2003 seasons. Other seasons can be found here. The Lyric is a great, world renowned opera company and always have excellent performers. I wouldn’t have subscribed if I didn’t think it was going to be worth it. I really am looking forward to going. Sorry that I gave the wrong impression.
I think the reasons that I thought this season was weak are partly the fact that I have already seen them do two of the operas (NOT that I won’t still enjoy them), and also partly there are two operas that I had never heard of, Iphigenie en Tauride and Dialogues of the Carmelites. These may (almost certainly will) turn out to be excellent. Yes, these are lame reasons, but I only meant that it was a slightly less-great season than usual.
I’m contemplating going to the opera for the first time this season, but damn, the tickets are expensive. I’d love to see La Traviata, but at $260 a pop, I’m going to have to think about it a bit more.
Give these two a shot, especially because Chicago will almost certainly do them wonderfully. I think they’re at their best in slightly off-beat productions (did you catch their Sweeney Todd a few years back?). *Dialogues *is a gripping story, and it has one of the most chilling final scenes you’ll ever see in any stage work. *Iphigenie * has a lot of exciting music, though I’m less familiar with it overall.
I think you’re in for a real treat. I’m jealous, in fact.
That sounds awfully high to me. I’ve been to most of the big companies in the U.S. - the Met, Chicago, L.A. & San Francisco, and I"ve never paid more than $70-80 for a seat. Of course that often meant I was sitting in the balcony, but so what. You don’t really need to watch the soprano’s makeup melt off under the spotlight…
Maybe you checked when they were running low on seats and only had the premium stuff left?
I am not an opera Doper yet, mainly because my winning ticket hasn’t come through yet…but I do watch quite a few on DVDs. I started a thread sometime ago, actually, asking if DVD operas were worth it. I rather liked Il Travatore; it’s one of my favorites. And opera in general can be very entertaining provided you come to it with an open mind. I think you should have a good time.
The face value on my tickets is $54.00. This is the single ticket price for the first section of the upper balcony on Monday nights. Weekdays are cheaper than weekends, and the higher you can go the cheaper. You still get a great view from the upper balcony and of course the sound carries throughout the theater.
Huh. I looked up the prices online in order to be accurate with this post, and see that online they’re quoting $65 to $80 per seat. Maybe I somehow read the mailed brochure wrong.
Yay! I’m gonna get to see La Traviata! Anybody heard of the sopranos Talise Trevigne or Rochelle Bard?
