Today we did something we have done in MN - went to The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. We saw The Enchanted Island.
This is a new work - a Baroque opera and a story drawn from Shakespeare. In The Enchanted Island, the lovers from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are shipwrecked on his fantasy island of The Tempest.
This is a musical pastiche which is, as we learned, an artistic work consisting of motifs or parts of other works. This was anything but hodgepodge, however!
This work features arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others, beautifully woven together, with a new libretto written by Jeremy Sams. The cast includes David Daniels, a wonderful contra tenor who played Prospero, Joyce DiDonato who played Sycorax - the jilted lover of Prospero, Plácido Domingo as Neptune, the fabulous Danielle de Niese as the sprite Ariel, and Luca Pisaroni as the ugly son of Sycorax - Caliban. The cast includes several other outstanding singers who play four shipwrecked lovers who find themselves caught in the middle of the tensions, schemes and battles of the island.
The costumes and set designs were absolutely wonderful as was the libretto and the story. This opera is going to have a good life, we thought. A very fun way to spend a cloudy morning!
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