Why the New York trip?

I'm in New York City right now for a whirlwind trip, having come up yesterday afternoon and returning to the District tomorrow morning.  It's always nice to see and visit my good friend Ian at his lovely apartment overlooking the historic Gramercy Park, but this trip also has another special purpose.

You see, tonight is the gala opening night performance of a brand new production at the Metropolitan Opera of Rossini's rarely performed opera, Armida.  International opera star Renee Fleming stars in the title role, and the production was mounted at her request.  This opera has a special meaning for me, since back in 1992, the North American premiere of the opera was the very first professional opera in which I sang.  To my knowledge, that production in Tulsa, along with its later co-production at Minnesota Opera, are the only two recent American productions of  the opera before tonight's opening. The last time we saw Armida in the United States before that was back in the 1950s, when Maria Callas requested and starred in the role.

Im excited.  A couple of months ago I was surprised and delighted to be able to acquire a couple of tickets to tonight's gala, and the tickets happen to be in the box immediately adjacent to the box of the Met's general director.

Armida is rarely performed because it is extremely difficult for the starring soprano, who has very demanding coloratura passages throughout the four-hour long opera. It is also an expensive production, since, in addition to what always ends up having to be a world-class soprano, the show requires not one, but six leading tenors. 

The storyline for Armida is based on a 16th century epic poem called Jerusalem Delivered, a tale about the Christian knights in the First Crusades who encounter a Muslim princess and sorceress, with magic, love, and later tragedy resulting.  The poem apparently sparked a lot of fancy in the 17th and 18th centuries, and then even into the 20th century, with well over a dozen major composers doing operas based on the story, including Lully, Saliere, Gluck (Armide), Handel (Rinaldo), Haydn, and even a 1904 composition by Dvorak.

From what I've seen of the pre-production publicity, the Met's version of the opera is going to be very different from the one I sang in Tulsa.  Tulsa's version was conceived and staged by Nicholas Muni, who was sort of the American bad boy of opera known for some of his radical updatings and controversial stagings of classic operas. (Muni is the one who did the infamous AIDS La Traviata at City Opera.)  We performed on a steeply raked stage and a huge projection screen upstage provided the means for projections of scenery, and, somewhat controversially, a recording of the opera's ballet, plus there were close-ups of Armida's face and views of her handling a large albino boa constrictor during some of the magic sequences.

In preparation for tonight's show, I had the chance back in February to view a concert version of the Gluck opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington.  I finally wrote my review of that show on the bus yesterday, and I'll post it here as soon as I get a chance to key it in.

More later!  It's time to start getting ready.