Operatic Orgy On The Way!

On my way to buy a ticket for last night's New York Philharmonic Concert of L'Enfant Et Les Sortileges and Saint-Saens Symphony #3 (The "Organ" Symphony) - a review should follow sometime within the next few millennia - I was finally able to buy most of this year's Met tickets. It took this long because my work friend Alfred (whose first opera, with me, was Angela's Traviata last year - hard act to follow) wanted to come along and we had to agree on dates. It turns out that we're only going to see Simon Boccanegra together at this point (splurging for the Balcony), and if he decides to go with me a particular night we'll see if there are any seats or standing room left.

So here's the list:

10/10/06: Idomeneo (Heppner, Roschmann, Makarina, Jepson)

10/11/06: La Gioconda (Urmana, Borodina, Giordani, Mishura, Lucic, Burchuladze)

10/16/06: Faust (Vargas, Swenson, Hakala, Abdrazakov)

11/02/06: Rigoletto (Pons, Siurina, Calleja, Herrera, Burchuladze)

11/16/06: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Braun, Florez, Damrau, Ramey, Del Carlo)

11/21/06: La Bohème (Villazon, Marambio, Glanville, Coleman-Wright)

11/30/06: Don Carlo (Botha, Racette, Borodina, Pape, Ramey)

12/19/06: Rigoletto (Alvarez, Siurina, Bieczala - debut, Aldrich - debut, Lloyd)

A huge Flute blitz: Both casts of The Magic Flute on the matinees of 12/31/06 and 01/01/07, plus the evening Die Zauberflöte on New Year's Day (Strehl, Milne, Miklosa, Pogassov, Pape, Lloyd )

01/30/07: Cavelleria Rusticana (Zajick, Poretta, Delavan) and I Pagliacci (Stoyanova, Licitra, Ataneli)

02/08/07: I Puritani (Netrebko, Kunde, Vassalo, Relyea)

02/19/07 and 02/27/07: Simon Boccanegra (Hampson, Gheorghiu, Giordani, Furlanetto, and I think Vassily Gerello is Paolo Albani). The first one is the joint Balcony performance with Alfred.
03/01/07: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Morris, Botha, Hong, Ketelsen, Nikitin, Zifchak)

03/22/07: Andrea Chenier (Heppner, Urmana, Delavan)

04/17/07: Giulio Cesare (Daniels, Swenson, Coote, Bardon, Zazzo)

04/24/07: Giulio Cesare (Zazzo, de Niese, Coote, Grove, Thompson)

04/26/07: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Mattei, Brownlee - debut, Di Donato, Relyea, Del Carlo)

05/02/07: Orfeo et Euridice (Daniels, Milne, Murphy). I tried to get tickets to a non-premiere night, but the only performance that wasn't sold out was on a Friday.

Total: $465. Thank heavens I got a credit limit increase. And Alfred was really nice to pay me back right away.

That's still the first round. I definitely want to at least look into The First Emperor, Jenufa, Die Ägyptiche Helene, and Il Trittico, and possibly one of the Giordani Bohèmes. I regret to say that apart from a few $110 Side Parterre Seats in one performance, Madama Butterfly is totally sold out. So is the Villazon/Netrebko Bohème (and I can't go to their Gala because it's the second night of Passover). I guess I has to takes my chances with Standing Room. And I do want to see some things at NYCO and other (non-operatic) venues. I still haven't been able to see Carmen with Rinat Shaham and Latonia Moore - I was indisposed for opening night, and Shaham was indisposed for September 30! Glad I was "stuck" at Barnes & Noble all that night. Poor woman first gets a cold and then her husband's stomach flu! Wishing her a refuah shleimah.

Two amusing notes. The consecutive Idomeneo, Gioconda, and Faust performances have ascending seat numbers - I107, I108, and I109, and the second Boccanegra is I110! Also, when I stopped in the Met Shop, one of the salespeople was wearing a kimono! No, it's not a brilliant Gelb marketing idea, but the woman's own idea, and not intended for advertising Butterfly. She apparently bought it on the street for only $36.

I also had a nice conversation with the man at the ticket window - it takes a while to check through 22 tickets! I regret to say I've already forgotten his name. He's been at the Met 19 years, apparently at the ticket window. I realize that people tend to have looong careers there (sometimes too long, Mr. Volpe), but I was surprised he wasn't promoted or didn't come up from another position. He remembers me coming probably since I started coming in 1993.

Well, tonight begins Sukkot, so a chag sameach to those who are observing it and Ramadan Mubarak to anyone observing that - and if I've forgotten any other faith's holiday, may that be happy too. I will be going to a Sukkot party/Ramadan break-fast at Park Slope Synagogue on Sunday night, which I imagine will be a wonderful followup to the joint Yom Kippur/Ramadan break-fast we had at my beloved B'nai Jeshurun. There will actually be a brief story about this on PBS' Religion and Ethics Weekly, probably at 6PM Sunday. I'll report on both soon, probably in conjunction with my Idomeneo review (you can probably figure out why)