Opera! Falstaff and Cosi fan Tutte

And did you know Maurice Sendak was an opera fan?

Don’t miss Falstaff at Met Opera — tonight on their website at 7:30 pm ET, and will stay up til 6:30 pm tomorrow, April 9.

As I note, you don’t need to know anything going into the opera. Indeed, it’s probably better if you don’t know anything about Falstaff in the Shakespearean plays (but if you do… watch for Sir John Falstaff’s greatest hits, which are primarily front-loaded in the opera.)

It’s a really peppy opera, and you can’t beat Falstaff for operatic fun. The first scene itself is very funny from the get-go.

[Also, in the above video, you can hear Stu sneeze… once. See if you can catch it!]

Older Opera Posts

I thought to dig through my old STUMP posts to find some older stuff on opera.

From August 2014: Are Met Opera Workers Underpaid?

I have not seen all the new productions, but I’ve got to say their latest production of Falstaff was great. I see some mixed reviews, but on the whole it was a lot of fun. And the Las Vegas Rigoletto was very well done, too.

The Falstaff I refer to here is the one that is being shown tonight. I think it’s got great setting and costumes.

And I ended that post with this famous Verdi chorus (he was so good with the ensemble writing):

From April 2014: Maurice Sendak and Opera
My favorite, affordable opera company at the time [I was in grad school] was NYC Opera (aww, RIP, NYC Opera). One of the shows I saw there was The Love for Three Oranges, a Prokofiev opera, with design (costumes, set, etc.) by Maurice Sendak. I just finished reading a retrospective of Sendak’s work ( a great coffee-table book chock-full of Sendak’s art) and I discovered how involved Sendak was in opera.

He was a Mozart-lover like me.

And was really into opera.

How could he not be?

To Life!

Here, have an operatic toast:

Enjoy life while you can!