Monday, November 10, 2008

Inside the Borgia Administration...

Friday night's cultural super-day was capped by the Washington National Opera's production of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. The performance starred soprano Sondra Radvanovsky. The Berwyn, Illinois native sang beautifully, a lovely voice in a rather unlovely tragedy about murder by wineglass. Placido Domingo conducted the orchestra, and all the singing sounded first-rate. The stage direction was a bit strange--a distracting homosexual romance had been added to the plot by John Pascoe, in addition to Lucrezia slitting her own throat. His set and costume design featured what looked like fetish wear rather than beautiful clothes. The choreography, by Bulgarian Vladimir Angelov, was unfortunately not good...

But who cares... The music was great, the singing was great, and the story was great. A great show.

OperaLuvr's blog post about Renee Fleming's performance. IonArts review here.