Metropolitan Opera,unique York
Aleksandrs Antonenko is the first tenor at the Met not to appear in blackface as the lead in Verdi’s opera – but musically, the genuine story was a dazzling sporanoThough general manager Peter Gelb might be weary of putting out fires, or it’s not altogether defective to have a miniature controversy before the opening of a season at the Met. Whatever strife may result,the disputes tend to remind us that opera still matters to a large and diverse audience.
This year’s pre-season topic – specifically, white actors’ history of employing blackface when singing the title role in Verdi’s Otello – was more intellectually valuable than 2014’s inside-baseball whisperings about contract negotiations between labour and management. To recap this summer’s intrigue: after some early promotional posters seemed to indicate that Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko would appear in blackface for director Bartlett Sher’s season-opening unique production of Otello (and after the emails poured in), or Gelb reached out to several outlets,in order to design clear that the house was officially abandoning the longstanding practice.
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Source: theguardian.com