During the opera season, I always look forward to one annual ritual that comes as regularly as back-to-school shopping in August or gridlock-alert days in November and December. I’m referring, of course, to the December season-opening gala at La Scala, which is preceded by the inevitable work stoppages and strike threats, only to be averted at the last minute. It’s not only opening night, of course—there was last summer’s strike, for instance, which shut down three performances of La Bohème at La Scala—but it is typically opening night when one or several unions stage protests by walking off the job.
This year was almost an exact repeat of last year, when a November strike, scuttled a couple performances of Verdi’s Requiem and workers also threatened to strike the opening-night performance of Tristan und Isolde, led by Daniel Barenboim. (The show went on.) I am happy to report that, despite generally pessimistic reports of funding difficulties for Italian opera, as of December 2, this year follows the pattern of previous Decembers at La Scala, and the December 7 Don Carlo will go on, at least according to a December 2 Bloomberg news report from Milan.
It turns out there would have been ramifications for New Yorkers, if this Don Carlo had been derailed. New York is one of several U.S. cities where live high-definition theater screenings of Don Carlo are about to take place. read more
In the opera universe, there’s wacky and weird—and then there’s Stefan Zucker. This living “world’s highest tenor” is so strange as to defy description—the closest I can come is that his speaking voice sounds like a Mike Myers impersonation in an Austin Powers movie, and his attachment to Italian opera divas of the past is almost pornographic. Many New York opera-lovers remember him from his WKCR radio show, which was discontinued in 1994. For the uninitiated, he can be viewed in a YouTube clip.
Zucker’s voice opens Jan Schmidt-Garre’s 1998 film, Opera Fanatic, just released in the U.S. on an Arthaus DVD, with a telephone message: “Oh hi, this is Stefan. I feel like shit with a touch of fever and a sore throat, but I will get on the plane… I have some little pimples on my face, and I would feel much more at my ease, much less self-conscious with makeup.” If this doesn’t give you the heeby-jeebies, I’m either not telling it right, or you’ve never heard Zucker’s voice before. read more
subscribe to RSS feed
find SundayArts on Facebook
