Steven Vlad

Metropolitan Opera Saturday matinee radio broadcast today!

Mozart: DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE
Evan Rogister; Ben Bliss (Tamino), Golda Schultz (Pamina), Thomas Oliemans (Papageno), Kathryn Lewek (Queen of the Night), Stephen Milling (Sarastro), Thomas Ebenstein (Monostatos), Shenyang (Sprecher)

I mean, it’s [The Magic Flute]; who can’t like that? I really like Golda Schultz. We saw her live once, I think in Milan in [The Marriage of Figaro]. I like her voice quality and she does the high stuff nicely. We saw this production on the Live in HD series a couple of years ago with Erin Morley who I like a lot. It’s OK. But I think I prefer just listening to it on the radio.

Next week is interesting. It’s a historic performance of Rossini’s “L’assedio di Corinto”, that is, “The Seige of Corinth”. This is not a commonly performed opera and Rossini’s non-comic operas are not performed much these days. I don’t know too much about it but it stars Beverly Sills so that should be interesting. I’ll do some homework and report back next week.

I saw Rossini’s “Guglielmo Tell” – William Tell – several years ago in New York with my wife and dad. You know the overture – think Lone Ranger. But the opera was really good. Long, but good. Rossini’s opere serie deserve more productions.

I think it’s fascinating that this very “Italian” composer wrote the opera while living in Paris and wrote it to a French libretto (Original title: “Guillaume Tell”) and that the Met used a version which translates the original French libretto “back” into Italian. Fun stuff.