Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and thoughts on operatic opinion

ctiee and I went to the opera last night and as always it was a delight. I have seen four of the eight productions this fall. I think Rake's is my second favorite. While Mozart's Magic Flute was fun and I adore the music, the production was quite over the top and my experience being in the nosebleed seats definitely diminished the experience. Wagner's Tannhauser takes the cake and Puccini's La Rondine was certainly just plain bad.

It's hard to rate opera, for there are so many factors, all being almost entirely subjective opinion. Did you like the music? And did the orchestra play it well? Did you like the songs? And were they sung well? Acting? Voice type? Plot, character development, libretto (lyrics)? Production (sets and costumes, including theme/era/etc)? And then, what was the overall impression? Did you have a good time? And possibly, would you ever go see this opera and/or production again? Whew. That's a lot. But it's part of what makes this so fun. It's kind of like going to see a very long, big budget movie performed live.

Let's break down Rake's Progress in the order I listed the above questions. ( For the truly interested, please read on )

As I have recently discovered, the opera reviewer for the SF Chronicle (I can't believe such a literate, major American city has a newspaper this bad) has wildly different opinions than me. Kosman seems to prefer standard opera, with standard productions. He said that "the new production of "Tannhäuser," [was] a far more invasive and off-putting piece of directorial folly". Whoa. This is in stark contrast to my opinion that this production was fantastic, despite one or two indulgences. In fact, it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen on stage. And, I also heard from ctiee that he thinks soprano Ruth Ann Swenson emotionally distant. Kosman and I are from entirely different planets, me thinks.