Humbled and Overwhelmed

William Kentridge's Wozzeck, photo @ Ken Howard The actual Vienna might be celebrating the holidays with its traditional series of Christmas/New Years concerts that are filled with merry waltzes, but in rainy New York the Metropolitan Opera there's a very different, iconic Viennese work on display. Alban Berg's Wozzeck is the work perhaps the most closely associated with the Second Viennese school. It made for grim holiday fare but was a gripping night of opera.

Dorrance Dance's Nutcracker, photo @ Christopher Duggan NYC has another Nutcracker ! Dorrance Dance just premiered their tap-dance Nutcracker at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday. I reviewed it for bachtrack here . It's overall a rollicking good time, although I am not that crazy about Duke Ellington's arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite . A blurb: Last night at the  Joyce Theater ,  Michelle Dorrance  was the latest choreographer to throw her hat into the  Nutcracker  ring. There have been countless balletic versions, hip hop  Nutcrackers , burlesque  Nutcrackers , so many different  Nutcrackers  that it begs the question: does the world really need another  Nutcracker ? Turns out the answer is yes, if it's as clever and well-done as Michelle Dorrance's version.

2019 was a slower year than usual in the second half because of a horrible ankle injury that left me housebound for much of the time. There are so many tickets I had to give up because the body simply would not cooperate. Nevertheless, I did see some very great performances here are some of the best and (worst) of some of the things I saw in 2019:

Lise Davidsen and Yusif Eyvasov, photo @ Ken Howard One dilemma Met operagoers love to fret about is how new productions inevitably sell well, but revivals quickly become tired and poorly attended. This season new productions of Porgy and Bess and Akhnaten  were sold out but revivals of Manon and Orfeo ed Euridice played to half-empty houses. The answer seems to be: inspired casting. This afternoon's performance of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades was pretty sold out despite the production being nearly 25 years old. The cast ranged from good to great. The production by Elijah Mohinsky is nothing fancy but tells the story well and effectively creates a doom-and-gloom mood. There was nothing tired about this revival.