My good friends Corky and Kathy are in New York and suddenly this big city feels less lonely. They are visiting this weekend to see a different opera, Carmen.
I spent my first years teaching sharing laughs with these two opera loving workmates. We used to go to the Academy of Vocal Arts to hear opera together and afterward share drinks (admittedly sometimes we skipped the opera). You’ll have to trust my description that we are three very, very attractive people heads pressed together now for a snapshot: A beard, a bald, and a blonde; and, very attractive. One of them doesn’t like their picture on social media.
I’m having my own opera adventure this weekend with Chaltin for a double bill of two powerfully emotive operas, Iolanta and Blue Beards Castle.
Iolanta is isolated, walled with stark white animal skulls. Her house is surrounded by forests.
It is all wonderful Tchaikovsky melody and lilting voices. Sonya Yoncheva aches on stage particularly piercing my heart multiple times delivering lines like, “Eyes are only for crying.”
Iolanta is lovely, but but feels like the opener. Bluebeard, has an intensity that feels like the main event.
After our opera we all meet for drinks at The Smith across the road from the Metropolitan Opera and pick up where we left off, with a bawdy pun delivered from Corky…
Iolanta begins with King Rene’ hiding away his blind daughter in a cottage in the woods where she doesn’t realize she is blind. In fact, she believes that ‘eyes are only for crying.’ Robert who is supposed to be her future husband arrives with his servant Vaudermont who falls in love with Iolanta. A doctor says he can cure her if she believes she can be cured and the king to help motivate her threatens that if the cure doesn’t work he will kill Vaudermont.
Notes on the production
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Composer………………………………. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Iolanta………………………………..…… Sonya Yoncheva
Bertrand…………………………..……… Harold Wilson
Duke Robert……………………………. Alexey Markov
King Rene………………………..………. Vitalij Kowaljow
Martha……………………………….…….. Larissa Diadkova
Brigitta…………………………………….. Ashley Emerson
Almeric……………………………………. Mark Schowalter
Ibn-Hakia…………………………………. Elchin Azizov
Conductor………………………..……… Henrik Nanasi
Metropolitan Opera
2/1/19