AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE Week two of the season brings "Swan Lake," with its wondrous score, lavish sets, and dashing, purple-clad von Rothbart, who in this staging becomes a perilous rival of the melancholy prince Siegfried.
Class distinction is really a minor theme of the opera, and what the work says about human nature is sometimes sidelined, leaving it to Verdi's wondrous score to make points on its own.
Anne Manson, who in recent seasons has become the conductor of choice for opera productions at Juilliard, understandably so, drew a glowing, textured and rhapsodic performance of Janacek's wondrous score from the excellent Juilliard Orchestra.
The conductor William Christie is an incomparable interpreter of Rameau, and the orchestra of Les Arts Florissants gives a crackling, lithe and wondrous account of the score, which sweeps by, a seamless fabric of arias, recitatives and ensembles.
If speculation over this production has been focused inordinately on Ms. Zambello, it's because no one doubted that the Met had assembled a cast -- headed by the tenor Ben Heppner as Aeneas, the soprano Deborah Voigt as Cassandra, and the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson as Dido -- that would do honor to this wondrous and challenging score.
Real Madrid want him because he scored wondrous goals for Spurs last year and became the Premier League's most thrilling player.
But the score is wondrous, a mosaic of infectious dances, glorious arias, ebullient choruses, elegant recitative and vivid pictorial music that evokes nature, thunder and icy winds.
In this concerto, as in most of his works (the bracing piano quartet "The King of the Sun"; the modern-day biblical "Sons of Noah," scored with wondrous eclecticism for soprano and quartets of flutes, guitars and bassoons), Mr. Hartke seems intent on surprising and amusing us simultaneously.
Nevertheless, Floyd's score contains many wondrous moments, from Susannah's Act I aria, "Ain't It A Pretty Night" to Sam's rendition of "The Jaybird Song".
"This is a wondrous story.
The opera is a miracle of Beethovenian motivic development, a gossamer score made up of wondrous, quirky bits, pieces and strands of motifs, melodies and dancing riffs.
