Patrick Smith (4) (1932–)

Super informative and worth reading.

Using the 1981-82 season as a sampler, Smith explores the Metropolitan Opera week-by-week for an entire production season. My assumption was that this would be primarily a fly-on-the-wall examination of how things went inside. It wasn't quite that, in part because - although he was able to speak with many people involved - this is not an 'authorised' production book. Instead, Smith uses each week's repertoire as a starting point to examine the Met's show more operations, its challenges, and its recent history, and the way that operagoing and production were shifting and changing all around. Forty years later there is a generation of new challenges and yet many of the things discussed here still resonate. Smith had been going to the Met for at least 20 years and is thus able to talk about the advances (and/or devolutions) in direction, performing, programming, audience structuring, and reputation. There's a lot of fascinating material here about what it takes to get one of the world's biggest opera companies going each year and also how an artistically conservative house nevertheless must grapple with the winds of change.

Enjoyable. show less