I went to see the Met’s I Puritani at my local movie theater. However, there were weird technical difficulties, and my friend and I ended up leaving late in the first Act and getting a refund. The screen blanked on us for ten minutes or so, and they had to start it up about half an hour earlier from where we’d been, and we just didn’t want to sit through that duplicate material to wait for the rest of the opera; it was a long evening anyway.
In the 45 minutes or so that I saw, though, I did get a few impressions. Anna Netrebko, singing Elvira, pretty much ruled. I thought she was phenomenal. She also appeared to be the only member of the cast who was doing any acting; that was weird. I felt bad for her; she was emoting like crazy to her tenor, who never even made eye contact with her. I guess you can get away with that when you’re performing at the Met; people can’t see your eyes. But when you’re being broadcast around the world in hi-def, it’s pretty glaringly noticable.
God, some of the staging was horrific. Slow, stationary, and unmotivated. I get the idea of the music being the highest priority, but still. There’s a reason this is a staged opera; I can listen to it on my ipod at home. Which, incidentally, I’m doing right now. Some of the music is very fine.
I am sorry I missed the rest of it; the last thing I saw was the duel between Riccardo and Talbot. But seriously: how cool is it that you can tell just by the names which one is the heroic tenor and which one is the dastardly baritone?
Hi! Come click around. It'll be awesome. This is a page for me, Jonathan Ichikawa, and theatery stuff. The 'about' page is here, if you're one of those people who needs things like that.
February 13th, 2007 
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