It wowed ’em in San Francisco – and just about everywhere else it’s played. And now “Dead Man Walking” is headed our way – to the New York City Opera, where it makes its New York premiere Sept. 13.
Terrence (“Master Class”) McNally wrote the libretto for Jake Heggie’s opera, based on the same material as the Sean Penn/Susan Sarandon movie, about the Death Row inmate and the nun who tries to save him.
Heggie’s score, the Cincinnati Enquirer raved, “evokes Britten, Bernstein, gospel and even Elvis.”
Sung in English with supertitles, “Dead Man Walking” features this year’s Richard Tucker Award winner Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen Prejean and John Packard as the condemned man, Joseph De Rocher.
For details, including a synopsis of this season’s other operas – “Don Giovanni,” “Madama Butterfly” and three early, one-act Puccini operas among them – visit nycopera.com or call the box office, (212) 870-5570.
Unlike its big season closer, when the Metropolitan Opera pinned all its hopes on one tenor – Luciano Pavarotti, who didn’t show up -its big opening Sept. 23 features four superstars in all, Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo, Olga Borodina and Renee Fleming, singing choice bits from “Otello,” “Samson et Dalila” and more.
But the real big noise is a new production, “A View from the Bridge,” which bows Dec. 5. Based on the Arthur Miller play – with a libretto by Miller and Arnold Weinstein and music by William Bolcom – it’s already taken Chicago by storm and is eagerly awaited here, with Catherine Malfitano leading the opening-night cast.
Look, too, for revivals of “Andrea Chenier,” with Domingo in the lead; and “Faust,” in which James Morris’ Mephistopheles, if stopped by the ringing of a cell phone, may well order the offender straight to Hell. At least we can hope.
For tickets and information, check metopera.org or call (212) 362-6000.
Elsewhere in Lincoln Center this fall, all eyes will be on the new guy in town – Lorin Maazel, the freshly minted music director of the New York Philharmonic.
The lean, French-born conductor – who first led the Phil 60 years ago, when he was a curly-haired prodigy of 12 – will open the season Sept. 18 with a bang: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and his “Leonore” Overture. The New York Choral Artists and soloists will lend their voices to Beethoven’s stirring hymn to brotherhood.
You can hear the Ninth again (with supertitles) on Sept. 19, 20, 21 and 24, along with John Adams’ “On the Transmigration of Souls,” which an anonymous New York family commissioned to commemorate those who died on Sept. 11.
Other highlights this season are the 19-year-old piano phenom Lang Lang (“we call him Lang Squared,” Maazel jokes), who’ll play the fiery Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 in a program that includes “Night on Bald Mountain” and the Sibelius Symphony No. 2 (Oct. 3, 4, 5 and 8).
Stay tuned, too, for when Maazel conducts Tchaikovsky’s Fifth (Oct. 9, 10, and 12) and when guest conductor Sir Colin Davis leads hunky tenor Ian Bostridge in an all-Brit bill of Britten, Purcell and Elgar (Nov. 14-16).
Those who tend to nod out early on weeknights will be pleased to note that this season’s evening concerts start at 7:30 p.m., instead of the customary 8. For more information, visit newyorkphilharmonic.org or call (212) 875-5656.
Carnegie Hall officially opens its doors Oct. 2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim, conducting (and playing piano) in a lush program of de Falla and Ravel, including the lusty Viagra-substitute “Bolero.”
After that, look for a rare recital by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter – featuring several of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, Gershwin, Kreisler and and one by her new, 73-year-old hubby Andre Previn (Oct. 17).
There’ll be more great music from violinist Gil Shaham, who’ll team with pianist Yefim Bronfman and cellist Truls Mark (Oct. 23), and, unless she cancels yet again, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, singing her beloved Gluck with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Oct. 6).
You can welcome Kurt Masur back to town when he conducts the London Philharmonic (Oct. 7), catch the San Francisco Symphony doing Bartok (Oct. 9 and 10) and hear those fabulous Philadelphians – aka The Philadelphia Orchestra – with Charles Dutoit at the helm and Martha Argerich on piano (Nov. 5).
For information and tickets, call CarnegieCharge at (212) 247-7800 or visit http://www.carnegiehall.org.
