West End Cinema Opera & Ballet seasons


Don Giovanni — the costuming was effective

Dear friends and readers,

Tonight Jim and I began our third season of opera and ballet at the West End Cinema, Georgetown, DC. It was here we saw Fiennes’ Coriolanus this past Saturday. I’ve not been writing about these (how much can I write?) but we have seen some marvelous productions — better than the Met a couple, and not so swamped before and afterwards in hype. You are left alone to enjoy your opera. Most memorable was La Scala’s iconoclastic Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Peter Mattie as the Don, Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna, and Bryn Terfel as Leporello (“opening night” 2011-12 it was dubbed). We haven’t been as lucky with ballets — though Cesare Pugni’s Esmeralda (from Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame) from Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow had some stunningly visually gorgeous moments, and Maria Aleandrova as the gypsy girl danced movingly.

Tonight was Puccini’s Il Trittico from London’s Royal Opera House, and while Jim said he preferred the Castleton version we saw last summer, I enjoyed these three equally. I do love being close up, and thought Ermonela Jaho singing Suor Angelica made breath-takingly beautiful sound (she gave it her all emotionally and was clearly shaking when she came out for her bows). Lucio Gallo was a powerful murderous dark Michele in Il Tabarro and a funny uninhibited Gianni Schicchi, and his ensemble cast amusingly typed. Each time I hear Lauretta’s O mio babbino caro I remember Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala movies and find it so odd that such a poignant lyric can exist happily in the midst of this hard comedy.

Gentle reader, let me take this opportunity to say Jim and I will have a time away for a few days: we are off to the South Central 18th century regional conference on landscapes and vistas at Asheville, N. Carolina, where I’ll give my paper on Ann Radcliffe’s landscapes.

Check out Emerging Pictures for various theaters around the US. An early review.

Ellen

Author: ellenandjim

Ellen Moody holds a Ph.D in British Literature and taught in American senior colleges for more than 40 years. Since 2013 she has been teaching older retired people at two Oscher Institutes of Lifelong Learning, one attached to American University (Washington, DC) and other to George Mason University (in Fairfax, Va). She is also a literary scholar with specialties in 18th century literature, translation, early modern and women's studies, film, nineteenth and 20th century literature and of course Trollope. For Trollope she wrote a book on her experiences of reading Trollope on the Internet with others, some more academic style essays, two on film adaptations, the most recent on Trollope's depiction of settler colonialism: "On Inventing a New Country." Here is her website: http://www.jimandellen.org/ellen/ No part of this blog may be reproduced without express permission from the author/blog owner. Linking, on the other hand, is highly encouraged!

2 thoughts on “West End Cinema Opera & Ballet seasons”

  1. Pingback: A summer’s day in March: at the Women’s Museum « Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two
  2. Pingback: Don Giovanni at the Barns at Wolf Trap « Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two

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