Sunday, November 05, 2006

Can’t Read Music. No Italian. Directs Opera. - New York Times:

SOME directors show up at the opera house on Day 1 of rehearsals with the opening-night performance all mapped out in their heads. Bartlett Sher, who usually works on plays or musicals, is not one of them.

“Oh no, no, no,” he protested a week and a half ago over a glass of cabernet sauvignon at a bar near Lincoln Center. He had just spent seven hours in an underground studio at the Metropolitan Opera, at work on Gioacchino Rossini’s comedy classic “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” his first production for the Met, opening Friday. Singers, a mime, stagehands, the conductor and Mr. Sher had been pouncing on their scenes with the absorption and mischief of children at play. There was harmony, and there was chaos.

12:23 PM