Intermezzo

You paid $169,000 for THAT?

The Wall Street Journal takes a long hard look at how the Met spends its production budget - which last year included $169,000 for Dmitri Tcherniakov's hand-made Prince Igor poppy field alone.

Jennifer Rowley bounces back

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Jennifer Rowley, the American soprano clumsily dumped from the Royal Opera House's Robert le Diable in 2012, has revealed more about the fiasco to the Wall Street Journal.

After agreeing to sub at a late stage for the pregnant Diana Damrau, she ran into problems in rehearsals. Conductor Daniel Oren "wanted it to go really fast and really high," she told the WSJ. "It was like trying to get an F150 to move like a Fiat."

"When you are trying to sing, and you are stressed and worried and crying, it immediately goes to the throat," she said. "Everything becomes constricted and tight."

"I thought this was the end of my career."

Fortunately for her, the Met disagreed. Last night she triumphed there as Musetta in La bohème.  The New York Classical Review was first off the reviewing block, praising her "memorable house debut" and her "rich, dark, but nimble voice."

Bridges have not been burned with the ROH either. True to their 2012 promise, they've hired her to sing Musetta in 2015 - when a certain will-she, won't-she Russian soprano may or may not turn up to give us her Mimì as well.

Stormy Werther

 

The Met have not only apologised for the audio outage that affected the final scene of Saturday's live Werther broadcast in many cinemas, they have supplied a video of the missing minutes as well (ROH take note). Watch and weep.

Get ready to book Met cinema tickets

Booking for the Met Opera Live in HD 2014-15 cinema season is about to open at Picturehouse cinemas.

Members' tickets can be bought from 16 March (depending on cinema) with public booking starting a week or so later. Check the Picturehouse site for a full list of booking dates by location.

Prices are: Live screenings £30, Encore screenings £20, with £7 off each price for members. Annual membership cost varies; in London it's typically £40, and includes 3 free tickets for standard shows (not including Met Live and similar events).

Even with the members' discount Picturehouse is not quite the cheapest deal in London (see here for alternatives), but it still (oddly) costs less than the grant-aided BFI and Barbican, which have not yet announced when they will open for booking.

The Season (Live Shows):

Meet Jonas Kaufmann in NY

Tomorrow, this could be you!

Anyone lucky enough to be in New York tomorrow (13 March) should head for the Met Opera shop, where Jonas Kaufmann is doing a signing session at 3pm.

Tip - it's likely to be popular, so get there early.

Applauding the scenery at the Met

And you thought it was all about the singing.

"Some operagoers might also have appreciated the choreographic performance and efficiency of the set, which swiftly slides and shifts in different directions within the shallow space of the three-dimensional stage," says architectural historian and critic Suzanne Stephens, in a detailed review of the Met's new Werther from an alternative perspective.