Night After Night

Writing, a blog, and a newsletter. By Steve Smith.

Three in one.

Joshua Fineberg's Lolita at Peak Performances @ Montclair

and

Keys to the Future at (Le) Poisson Rouge

and

Die Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera
The New York Times, April 8, 2009

How remarkable that a sedate suburb like Montclair, New Jersey, is home to some of the New York area's most provocative presentations in Jedediah Wheeler's Peak Performances series at Montclair State University. I can't speak to the quality of the Manhattan shuttle bus service on weekends, but I can now verify that getting to MSU on a weeknight is a piece of cake — the New Jersey Transit train line stops two blocks away from the theater (it's the penultimate stop, Montclair Heights).

As for the event, I'm pretty pleased with this review — but do pay special attention to the fantastic photo by Michelle V. Agins, which does an amazing job of actually showing what this incredibly complex production looked like. You can also still see the trailer video, with bits of a European performance and comments from Fineberg, on YouTube.

Steve Smith

2 responses to “Three in one.”

  1. Lisa Hirsch Avatar
    Lisa Hirsch

    Re Die Walküre, I listened to part of Acts I and II and so disliked everything I heard that I turned it off. It’s true that their overly-close miking for the broadcasts exaggerates the bad in almost every singer, but Levine sounded half asleep.

    Reply
  2. Steve Smith Avatar
    Steve Smith

    Lisa, I have no trouble at all imagining that this performance was considerably less impressive under the close scrutiny of radio microphones and broadcast compression; the house acoustic was very kind to a number of idiosyncrasies, no question. The condition of the orchestra was a mystery — overwork is all I could presume.

    Reply

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