MET Cover Tenor Taylor Stayton Takes Center Stage At PBO

Tenor of the High Seas: Taylor Stayton
shows off his top C's in Florida

"Life is good for tenor Taylor Stayton. Wearing baggy shorts, t-shirt and a boyish smile, he was celebrating his 30th birthday last Friday when he arrived for an interview at Palm Beach Opera’s production center in West Palm Beach. On Friday and Sunday, he will make his role debut as Tonio in the company’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera The Daughter of the Regiment....Not many tenors are up to portraying Tonio. That’s because of the nine high Cs in his first act aria 'Ah, mes amis…Pour mon ame.' It’s the aria that rocketed Luciano Pavarotti to stardom when he sang it in 1972 at the Metropolitan Opera. 'The thing is, it’s like a secret among us tenors,' he said. 'If you have a high C, it’s not that difficult'....But it wasn’t just his facility with high Cs that persuaded Palm Beach Opera to cast him. Beauty of voice, tone and line are paramount in bel canto opera. 'His voice has such a lyric quality that the parts that aren’t high Cs are also beautifully sung,' said Scott Guzielek, director of artistic operations. As a teenager, Stayton sang, played guitar and performed in school musicals and choirs. He grew up listening to bands such as Aerosmith, The Beatles, Steely Dan and The Band and still loves classic rock. He was steered into opera at Ohio State University. In addition to performing with smaller companies, he’s covered several roles at the Met. One memorable night in 2011 he wound up on stage as Percy in Anna Bolena alongside soprano Anna Netrebko, when Stephen Costello fell ill in the middle of the show. 'Within five minutes, they threw me into costumes and makeup,' he said. 'It was better that way. If he’d canceled two days before I would have had to sit for two days and gotten my nerve up.' In April, he will return to the Met to cover Costello in The Merry Widow. At this stage of his career he prefers comic roles. 'That’s my personality,' he said." [Source] Click here for more information about the Palm Beach Opera production of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment by clicking here.

Will The Metropolitan Opera Be Forced To Sell Chagall Paintings?

Renée Fleming in the new Susan Stroman production of Lehár's The Merry Widow (Die Lustige Witwe) which opens this month at the Metropolitan Opera. It will replace the last new production they did of the operetta in 2000. (Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)

"New York City’s Metropolitan Opera Association had its rating cut by Moody’s Investors Service to three steps above junk and is again turning to works by Marc Chagall for collateral as its cash dwindles. The nation’s largest performing-arts organization is putting the Chagalls hanging in its lobby -- 'The Triumph of Music' and 'The Sources of Music' -- up as collateral on a line of credit with Bank of America Corp., Sam Neuman, a spokesman for the opera, said in an e-mail today. The opera is tapping the paintings anew after using a $100 million bond sale to pay off bank loans backed by the artwork in 2012. Moody’s today lowered that debt one level to Baa1 and assigned a negative outlook, meaning more cuts are possible. The Met’s deficit ballooned to an estimated $22 million in fiscal 2014, from $2.8 million in 2013, according to financial documents. The opera, which had its first performance in 1883, expects to balance its budget in the next two years by cutting expenses such as labor costs, Neuman said....In fiscal 2013, the organization had monthly liquidity of $46 million, covering 53 days of cash expenses, according to Dennis Gephardt, a Moody’s analyst. Without a $17 million draw on its line of credit, liquidity fell in half, according to preliminary fiscal 2014 results, Gephardt wrote in today’s report." And the New York Times points out: "Some of the Met’s biggest stars recently agreed to cut their fees to help the Met. This week, another cost-cutting measure was evident: It did not put up its Christmas tree."[Source]

Renée Fleming Heads The Line-Up Of New Productions At MET

Renée Fleming under the hot pursuit of Nathan Gunn (Photo: Brigitte Lacombe/Metropolitan Opera)

The Metropolitan Opera announced its 2014-15 season today. Check out the online brochure here. Several new productions are added to the repertoire and many works created under the Peter Gelb regime will be revived. The New Year's Eve Gala will be focused on

Susan Stroman's new interpretation of Franz Lehár's 110-year old operetta Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow as it will be performed in English) starring mega-star Renée Fleming in her role debut as Hanna. "The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play, L'attaché d'ambassade (The Embassy Attaché) by Henri Meilhac. The operetta has enjoyed extraordinary international success since its 1905 premiere in Vienna and continues to be frequently revived and recorded. Film and other adaptations have also been made. Well-known music from the score includes the 'Vilja Song,' 'Da geh' ich zu Maxim' ('You'll Find Me at Maxim's'), and the 'Merry Widow Waltz'. The operetta was first performed at the

Theater an der Wien in Vienna on December 30, 1905, with Mizzi Günther as Hanna, Louis Treumann as Danilo, Siegmund Natzler as Baron Zeta and Annie Wünsch as Valencienne. It was Lehár's first major success, becoming internationally the best-known operetta of its era. Lehár subsequently made changes for productions in London in 1907 (two new numbers), and Berlin in the 1920s, but the definitive version is basically that of the original production. The operetta toured Austria and in 1906 enjoyed productions in Hamburg's Neues Operetten-Theater, Berlin's Berliner Theater (starring Gustav Matzner as Danilo and Marie Ottmann as Hanna, who made the first complete recording in 1907), and Budapest's Magyar Szinhaz. Its English adaptation by Basil Hood, with lyrics by Adrian Ross, became

a sensation in London in 1907 and ran for an extraordinary 778 performances, followed by extensive British tours. The first performance in Paris was at the Théâtre Apollo on April 28, 1909. Many international productions, as well as revivals followed, as did sequels, spoofs and film versions. http://www.musicals101.com/widowhist3.htm. The operetta originally had no overture; Lehár wrote one for the Vienna Philharmonic to perform at his 70th birthday concert in April 1940." [Source] For a full synopsis, click here.