{"id":3513,"date":"2025-05-08T23:47:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T03:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3513"},"modified":"2025-05-09T01:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T05:42:09","slug":"what-ails-todays-metropolitan-opera-its-in-the-pit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2025\/05\/what-ails-todays-metropolitan-opera-its-in-the-pit.html","title":{"rendered":"What Ails Today’s Metropolitan Opera? — It’s in the Pit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The current issue of the \u201cNew York Review of Books\u201d carries <\/em>my review<\/a> of the Metropolitan Opera\u2019s current \u201cAida\u201d \u2013 a new production given fourteen times this season. It features one of the company\u2019s heralded young stars \u2013 the soprano Angel Blue \u2013 and it\u2019s mainly conducted by the Met\u2019s music director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin. The result is tepid. As \u201cAida\u201d is the quintessential grand opera, its current fate, I write, \u201cmust disclose something about the fate of the house\u201d and the challenges it faces. A crucial defect \u201cis what\u2019s happening \u2013 and not — in the pit.\u201d I proceed to compare today\u2019s \u201cAida\u201d conductor and orchestra with the Met orchestra of the 1930s and the conductor then presiding over Italian opera: Ettore Panizza \u2013 a Verdi interpreter of genius. I write in part: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the Met\u2019s earliest Aida<\/em> broadcasts, the most esteemed (it is readily available on youtube<\/a>) was aired on February 6, 1937. . . . What first commands attention is Panizza and his band. The intensity of this contribution is not merely different in degree from what we now hear; its difference is fundamental: a difference in kind. Compared to Nezet-Seguin, Panizza deploys a vast range of tempo (the final duet is more than a third slower than the one to which we have grown accustomed). Additionally, the pulse throughout is radically flexible, accommodating scorching accelerandos (typically at cadences and phrase endings) and lyric allargandos (expanding the arc of a sung phrase). At the same time, linear tension is maintained \u2013 so the cumulative effect is that of an ongoing flexed line. All of this furnishes punctuation and trajectory, shape and purpose. The pit is not supportive; it is collaborative. . . . [In act three,] Amonasro enters: a wild man: \u201cYou are not my daughter! You are the slave of the Pharaohs!\u201d And Panizzza\u2019s orchestra is wild. . . . Juxtaposed with this powder keg, today\u2019s Met orchestra is a matchbox. . . .<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American arts are mired in a crisis of cultural memory. The implications for the Metropolitan Opera . . . are infinitely complex. A basic reality, finally, is that grand opera is a product of the nineteenth century, and its most idiomatic exponents began to fade from the scene half a century later. Absent a time machine, maintaining opera as a living artform can today only be an exercise in ingenious accommodation. Panizza was no anomaly \u2013 he embodied interpretive norms once widespread and now best remembered via the recordings of Toscanini (they were colleagues at La Scala). Are those performance practices \u2013 if adequately acknowledged and studied \u2013 to any extent revivable? Is it at least possible to revive the intensities of a Dmitri Mitropoulos or Georg Solti \u2013 non-idiomatic Verdi conductors who lit a fire at the Met? A further consideration: Toscanini, in his final Met season, led 68 out of 209 performances. Panizza, in his final Met season, led 38 of 69 performances given in Italian. This season, Nezet-Seguin (who is also music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra) leads only 36 of 194 performances. The house needs a genuine music director of its own.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a related blog on Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducting Wagner at the Met, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a related article on Lawrence Tibbett and the “crisis” afflicting opera in America, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current issue of the \u201cNew York Review of Books\u201d carries my review of the Metropolitan Opera\u2019s current \u201cAida\u201d \u2013 a new production given fourteen times this season. It features one of the company\u2019s heralded young stars \u2013 the soprano Angel Blue \u2013 and it\u2019s mainly conducted by the Met\u2019s music director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin. The result is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-UF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3513"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3523,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513\/revisions\/3523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}