Last night we saw and heard Medea, the opera by Cherubini, performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I was absolutely overwhelmed by every aspect of the production, from the superb musicians of the orchestra, through the brilliant staging and costumes, to, of course, the astonishing vocal performances, especially by Sondra Radvanovsky, who played the hugely demanding title role.
The main reason I'm not an opera fan is that I find operas too elaborate, too long, and too artificial.
I just looked up Cherubini now, a Florentine composer who lived most of his long adult life in Paris. A list of his operas is available on the Internet. I imagine that most of them are never performed these days.
I have to think more about the mystery of Medea: a Greek myth, turned into a tragedy by Euripides, rewritten in 17th century France by Corneille, turned into an opera in revolutionary France (1797), and now performed in New York (and watched in Jerusalem). What a trajectory!
