Met Opera Broadcasts Reruns.

Met Opera HD Broadcasts that I wrote about more when they just got around to it and which now became a sort of a regular thing to expect are reruning two operas from previous seasons in the next couple of weeks. Actually, the first date is tonight (Wednesday, July 29th) and the second date is August 5th.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia – July 29, 2009
The Magic Flute – August 5, 2009

If you happen to live in New York, you can also attend Summer HD Festival in August:

The Damnation of Faust (Met’s HD Broadcast)

I went to see/hear Met’s HD Broadcast yesterday – Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust (or as everyone pretentiously overpronounced it, La Damnation de Faust) – and I have to say that I thought it was a great production. The problem, you see, is that Damnation of Faust is not really an opera. It does have three main characters and a large chorus, but it does not have a coherent narrative, or at least it does not allow one to smoothly transition from one scene to another. It is a series of episodes, songs, or tableaux, if you will, from Goethe’s Faust. It is most often performed as a concert, not as a staged opera – there isn’t much to stage, I suppose. Here is for example a review of a concert version from 2005: