Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Metropolitan Opera

The Return of “Kavalier & Clay” – to the Met and at the Movies

“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” is the first opera I’ve seen that plays more like a movie. A triumph of production design, in some respects it realizes the Wagnerian ideal of Gesamkuntswerk, the synthesis of disparate elements into a “total work of art,” here employing technology of a sort Wagner couldn’t possibly have imagined. That’s not to say Mason Bates’ music is anywhere near the same exalted level, which probably, in this case, is not such a bad thing. As a piece of pop art, “Kavalier & Clay” works. Mostly.

The inspiring story of two Jewish cousins – one a Brooklyn native, the other a refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia – who channel their hopes, heartbreaks, and thirst for justice into the creation one of the comic’s bestselling superheroes – is back at New York’s Metropolitan Opera with all its whiz-bang dazzle. I caught it earlier in the season, in the fall, but The Met had a special on tickets around the holidays, so I’m going to see it again with a friend next month. The production will run through February 21.

Can’t make it to New York? You’ll have a chance to experience it at select movie theaters this Saturday, January 24, and next Wednesday, January 28, as part of “The Met: Live in HD” series, presented through Fathom Entertainment. (Look for the link below.)

As a fan of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, I knew going in that concessions would have to be made. Even at its most surfacy, Chabon’s book (which I read for a second time to prep for the opera) is simply too grand – even with the Met’s stagecraft being as wondrously vertiginous as it is – and too epic to be conveyed even on the boards of the world’s largest opera palace. It also happens to be beautifully and characterfully written. There is only so much of that (the story is told from a third person omniscient perspective) that is going to survive translation to the theater.

In the end, this panegyric to the power of comic books and the role of popular culture in the American Dream at an especially dynamic time in this nation’s history – while simultaneously exploring comics as an outlet through which the artists grapple with their personal demons and grasp for redemption – can never hope to serve as more than “Classics Illustrated.” So definitely read the book.

But the opera recreates a great escape from the bottom of the Moldau, a superhero, called The Escapist, punching out Nazis in the best Jack Kirby tradition, Salvador Dali in a diving suit, a thunderstorm over the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and a final act, with the stage in its full, mechanized glory, that departs significantly from the action of the book, but contains a touch of poetry and grace courtesy of another one of the cousin’s heroic creations. I do miss the business with the Golem, the World’s Fair, the entire Antarctica segment, the cameo by Orson Welles, and the recurring allusions to Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. Only Chabon could have written it. (Gene Scheer is the opera’s librettist.)

Opera as a genre rises and falls on its writing for voice, at its most powerful, arousing overwhelming emotions. At its most magnificent, there really is nothing else like it. From a purely musical standpoint, “Kavalier & Clay” never achieves that level of irrational grandeur, but as I indicated at the start, this may be the rare instance in which that’s okay. It would have been nice had it cracked the extraordinary, but the music does actually serve as but one component, and an equal one, in the three-hour entertainment. It’s almost like underscore, breezy in the New York street scenes and rhythmically driving in flights from the Nazis. There’s a spiritual kinship to film music. The emotional moments are lower-voltage than I would have liked – pretty, but hardly indelible – and the hard-driving action scenes and scenery changes sound like John Williams with a bit of a John Adams gloss.

Manhattan street and office scenes sport “jazz” inflections of a Gershwinesque variety, there’s a bawdy dance party that bristles with Bernstein, and at times in the European scenes, you could make out the inclusion of a mandolin – not necessarily the first instrument I associate with either Czechoslovakia or Jewry, but it is an instrument with a long folk tradition that reaches across the continent. I concede, this particular observation could simply reveal a blind spot in my own education.

Bates’ much-vaunted electronic additions (he experiments with electronica and even DJs on the side) really don’t add up to very much. That element of the score barely registers in the opera’s first act. In the second, it could just as easily not have been there. It’s just another element of seasoning.

The work’s real energy comes in its frequent, dizzying set changes and eyepopping set pieces, propelled by technical/technological wizardry. A great escape at the opera’s start prepares the audience for the synthesis of opera, movie, and even comic book, to come. There are entire montages that conjure the layout and dynamism of a comic’s page.

It’s insane to even consider that “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” could be made into an opera, and I’m not sure that it actually succeeds as one. But I am unshakeable in my conviction that it is a hell of a good show.

See it at the Met, February 17-21

https://www.metopera.org/season/2025-26-season/the-amazing-adventures-of-kavalier–clay/

Or at the movies, January 24 & 28

https://www.fathomentertainment.com/releases/the-metropolitan-opera-the-amazing-adventures-of-kavalier-clay/

January 20, 2026
Roberta Alexander Acclaimed Soprano Dies at 76

The soprano Roberta Alexander has died.

Born in Lynchburg, VA, and raised in Yellow Springs. OH, Alexander was a leading singer at the Metropolitan Opera from 1983 to 1991. In addition to her successes in the roles of Mozart’s heroines, she was an unusually well-rounded Mimi in “La bohème” and sang the title role in Janáček’s “Jenůfa.”

It’s interesting to note that she participated in the world premiere of Viktor Ullman’s concentration camp opera “The Emperor of Atlantis” (at Dutch National Opera), composed in Theresienstadt in 1943, but not performed until 1975. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944. Alexander made her home in the Netherlands from the age of 23.

Her U.S. debut was in 1980 as Pamina in “The Magic Flute” at Houston Grand Opera. Her Met debut was as Zerlina in “Don Giovanni.” At her peak at the Met, she also appeared as Vitellia in Mozart’s “La clemenza di Tito,” Antonia in Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann,” Countess Almaviva in “The Marriage of Figaro,” Donna Elvira in “Don Giovanni,” and inevitably Bess in “Porgy and Bess.” In 2016, she returned to sing the Fifth Maid in Strauss’ “Elektra.” She also enjoyed notable successes at the opera houses of Berlin, Vienna, London, and Zurich. She performed with most of the major orchestras in Europe and the U.S. and virtually all the major conductors.

Alexander was married twice, to the conductor Edo de Waart (a union that ended in divorce) and orchestral manager Siebe Riedstra. Alexander died on Tuesday at the age of 76. R.I.P.

Samuel Barber’s “Solitary Hotel,” on a text from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”

André Previn’s “Vocalise”

Leoš Janáček’s “Jenůfa” (closed caption available)

Playlist of Mozart songs

October 16, 2025
Kavalier & Clay Opera A Comic Book Masterpiece Revisited

I’ve been revisiting Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” which I finally got around to reading for the first time only within the past decade. (The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.) I wanted it to be fresh in my mind when I see Mason Bates’ new opera at the Met next week. I’m a little over halfway through (I was hoping to knock it out before the first of October so that I can get on with my Halloween reading), and I’m loving it all over again.

First of all, I sense in the author a kindred spirit, as he obviously adores all the pop cultural detritus that I myself have been lapping up since childhood. He also has an enviable grasp of the history and the social history of New York, a mindboggling eye for detail, and a real flair for crafting playful similes that makes Ray Bradbury seem positively drab by comparison.

Of course, there’s a lot of comic book lore, both real and fabricated, as the dynamic duo of Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clayman, cousins, one European and one native, are brought together in a Brooklyn tenement to pool their talents in the creation of an unapologetically antifascist superhero, The Escapist. (Recall when Jack Kirby had the temerity to draw Captain America punching out Hitler a year before Pearl Harbor.) The team is also, I assume, inspired in part by Siegel and Shuster of “Superman” fame, both in terms of a crafting one of the first comic book superheroes and also getting screwed by their publishers.

But the story is lent a whole other, higher-stakes dimension through Joe’s plight, his separation from his family in his own escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, and later his efforts to have his younger brother to join him in safety in the United States. Joe’s passage is lent a touch of magical realism in the inclusion of a genuine Golem (folkloric protector of the Jews). Quite the ponderous symbol! Golems and escapists and explorations of the true nature of heroism pervade the narrative. The backdrop of the war, the Holocaust, and the tragedy that propelled so many immigrants to the United States haunts the American dream at a time when the U.S. is about to emerge – thanks in no small part to the ingenuity and hard work of European refugees – as the mightiest and most vibrant force in the history of the world.

Chabon shuffles a magic card deck, interleaving characteristics of the American Jewish experience and those of their displaced brethren with the worlds of classic comics, escape artists, magicians, strong men, surrealists, pulp writers, radio actors, Greenwich Village bohemians, the Empire State Building, the 1939 World’s Fair, “Citizen Kane,” and too many other subjects to catalogue. There’s even mention of a Karol Szymanowski Society (and Szymanowski’s “Songs of the Infatuated Muezzin”)!

It’s the rare modern novel that I wish I had written. We’ll see what Mason Bates does with it. I’m happy to see that some of The Escapist’s exploits will be brought to life through choreography and projections. If nothing else, it will be a spectacle. But it will be the music, especially idiomatic, ingratiating writing for voice, that will determine whether or not the opera will have legs. I can’t for the life of me imagine how one can cram so much incident into an opera. I assume librettist Gene Scheer worked with the composer to pare down the novel to what they believe is its essence. I am amused to find Salvador Dali, at least, made the final cut.

“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay” runs at the Metropolitan Opera through October 11.

https://www.metopera.org/season/2025-26-season/the-amazing-adventures-of-kavalier–clay/

Photos taken during my recent trip to Lincoln Center to see Gustavo Dudamel conduct the New York Philharmonic, with the exception of the one of The Escapist cleaning Hitler’s clock, borrowed from the Met’s Facebook page

September 29, 2025
Montemezzi’s Lost Opera A Rediscovery

If opera will not come to the middle of the mountain, the middle of the mountain will come to opera!

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Italo Montemezzi (Montemezzi, if I am not mistaken, literally translating as “half-mountain”).

A representative of that vast artistic lineage of one-hit wonders, Montemezzi is pretty much known for his opera “L’amore dei tre re” (“The Love of Three Kings”), which one might assume from the title to be a heartwarming Christmas piece about the three Magi, along the lines of Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl of the Night Visitors.” If so, one would be mistaken.

“L’amore dei tre re” is an overheated historical tragedy, centering around a love triangle – perhaps even a ménage à quatre – in which everyone winds up dead or inconsolable. Another great night at the theater! Only in opera does one set foolish, deadly traps to ensnare the guilty, only to have the scheme backfire horribly.

“L’amore dei tre re” opened at La Scala in 1913 to mixed reviews. But what do the Italians know about opera? When it made its way abroad, it became an international success. In the U.S., it was hailed as “the best operatic work coming from Italy since Verdi’s ‘Falstaff.’” In 1918, it was sung at New York’s Metropolitan Opera by Enrico Caruso, Claudia Muzio, and Pasquale Amato.

Alas, the mania for “The Love of Three Kings” proved to be but a flare. The opera had its moment, but after World War II, frequency of performances declined to the point where now, if it’s ever done at all, it’s an event.

Unabashedly decadent, coyly erotic, dramatic, and dreamlike, “Three Kings” may be Italian, but it was written by a composer who had assimilated broader musical influences. The score cranks up the heat, in kind of a mélange of Wagner, Strauss, and Debussy.

It won’t turn up very often at your friendly neighborhood opera house. Happily, there’s a fine recording of the work in modern sound (i.e. stereo), featuring Anna Moffo, Placido Domingo, and Cesare Siepi.

That said, here’s an interesting document from the Met in 1941, with the composer conducting on a broadcast introduced by Milton Cross!

In 1948, the New York Times described “L’amore dei tre re” as “a tone poem for voices and orchestra,” lauding it as “the most poetic and aristocratic of Italian operas” and declaring of its composer, “He never descends beyond the loftiest level.”

Not bad! Where is it now?

We’ll keep a candle in the window for you on your sesquicentenary, Italo Montemezzi.

August 4, 2025
Marian Anderson at the Met 70 Years Ago

It was on this date 70 years ago that Marian Anderson made her Metropolitan Opera debut, as the sorceress Ulrica, in Verdi’s “Un ballo in maschera” (“A Masked Ball”), making her the first African American singer to appear in a solo role on the Met stage.

Anderson, whose talent was described by Arturo Toscanini as “a voice one hears once in a hundred years,” was already in her late 50s, at the far end of a singing career that had already made her a household name and a reluctant symbol for social justice. Her legendary recital from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial took place on Easter, 1939 – nearly 16 years earlier – after she was shut out of performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her skin color. Ironically, this only served to increase her exposure. The audience gathered on the National Mall was estimated at 75,000, with millions listening to the live radio broadcast in their kitchens and living rooms across the nation.

Anderson’s belated appearance at the Met may have signaled a new era, but progress was slow, and the administration was careful about which singers it sent to tour in certain areas of the country.

It would be churlish of me to observe that, in order for a Black woman to make it on stage at the Met, she had to be dressed like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Because it is opera, after all, and everyone dresses like that.

The first male African American soloist appeared on the Met stage only a few weeks later. Baritone Robert McFarrin sang Amonasro in Verdi’s “Aida.” McFerrin was the father of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” singer Bobby McFerrin, to give you an idea of how recent this history is.

Now it’s not unusual to see Black singers in whatever role. Opera is fantasy, after all. Everything is heightened. It shouldn’t matter if different cultures and social strata are inexplicable melting pots. In the past, no one thought twice if a white Canadian sang Otello or an Italian woman sang Cio-Cio-San or if the principals were a mix of French, German, Irish, and American.

The core of opera is great singing. And no matter how outlandish the plots or settings or costumes or make-up, the most enduring examples of the form deal in emotional truth. It’s one of the few arenas in which all men and women are received with an enthusiasm commensurate with their talent.

January 7, 2025

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS