The Metropolitan Opera: The Exterminating Angel

Nov 18, 2017

2h 22m

★ 7.7

Overview

After the acclaimed Met premiere of Thomas Adès's "The Tempest" in 2012, the composer returned with another masterpiece, this time inspired by filmmaker Luis Buñuel's seminal surrealist classic "El Ángel Exterminador", during the 2017–18 season. As the opera opens, a group of elegant socialites gather for a lavish dinner party, but when it is time to leave for the night, no one is able to escape. Soon, their behavior becomes increasingly erratic and savage. The large ensemble cast tackles both the vocal and dramatic demands of Adès's opera with one riveting performance after another. Tom Cairns, who also penned the work's libretto, directs an engrossing and inventive production, using a towering wooden archway to trap the characters onstage. And Adès himself takes the podium to conduct the frenzied score, which features a host of unconventional instruments, including the eerie electronic ondes Martenot.

Genres

Fantasy

Music

Production Companies

The Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera: The Exterminating Angel Trailers

Cast

Edmundo de Nobile

Joseph Kaiser

Lucía de Nobile

Amanda Echalaz

Leticia Maynar

Audrey Luna

Leonora Palma

Alice Coote

Silvia de Ávila

Sally Matthews

Francisco de Ávila

Iestyn Davies

Blanca Delgado

Christine Rice

Alberto Roc

Rodney Gilfry

Beatriz

Sophie Bevan

Raúl Yebenes

Frédéric Antoun

Eduardo

David Portillo

Colonel Álvaro Gómez

David Adam Moore

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7.0

Inland Empire

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An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.

0.0

Theodora

Jan 1, 2015

The oratorio concerns the Christian martyr Theodora and her Christian-converted Roman lover, Didymus.

6.7

Sea of Blood

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Based on a revolutionary play supposedly written by the Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic, Kim Il-sung, and rumored to have been co-directed by Kim Jong-il. This revolutionary work is also popular among the Chinese, especially those who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and have fond memories of revolutionary antics.

6.5

The Turn of the Screw

Jan 1, 2004

The operatic version of the famous story about a governess who fears her two charges are possessed.

6.3

Elektra

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Strauss's opera adapted to the screen by Gotz Friedrich.

9.0

Ermione

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0.0

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In Benjamin Britten's operatic adaptation of Henry James' masterwork, a naive governess (Helen Field) arrives at a country manor and soon discovers that it holds a murky secret involving her charges and two ghostly servants who wield a sinister influence on them. The taut, atmospheric production also stars Sam Linay, Machiko Obata, Menai Davies and Phyllis Cannan, with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra providing accompaniment.

0.0

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"La Bohème" is one of Giacomo Puccini's most popular and timeless works and the second-most performed opera at New York's Metropolitan Opera. This production, directed by the legendary Franco Zeffirelli, features José Carreras, Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto and Richard Stilwell. The opera is replete with extraordinary visual beauty as it presents the tragic story of young bohemians struggling to make it in the world.

4.7

Little Boy Blue

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The Big Bad Wolf stalks Little Bo Peep and steals one of her sheep. She enlists Little Boy Blue and a dancing scarecrow to assist her and her mischievous black sheep in rescuing it. Singing, dancing, hilarity and impalement ensue.

0.0

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A version of Benjamin Britten's opera based on the Melville story. Will the virtuous young sailor Billy Budd be hanged for murder?

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0.0

From the House of the Dead & Glagolitic Mass

Nov 6, 2023

Can the darkest moments of life also lift our souls? Drawing on his own experience in a Siberian prison in the company of misfits, murderers and theives, Dostoevsky was inspired to write his novel Notes from a Dead House, telling his brother at the time: ‘Believe me, there were among them deep, strong, beautiful natures, and it often gave me great joy to find gold under a rough exterior.’ In Janáček’s hands, Dostoevsky’s inspiration and the raw material drawn from an appalling world of incarceration find an even more powerful form of expression in his last opera, From the House of the Dead. Unfettered by conventional story-telling, Janáček wrote his own libretto, freely weaving together a series of stories of everyday prison life and of the fates of individual convicts.

0.0

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7.2

Donkey Skin

Dec 20, 1970

A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.

0.0

Salome

Apr 29, 1997

Richard Strauss's opera, from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

10.0

Don Giovanni

Dec 1, 2000

Live performance at the Metropolitan Opera in 2000.

0.0

Les Contes d'Hoffmann

Nov 22, 2003

Live performance from the Opéra National de Paris, 2003.

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0.0

Rigoletto

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Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851. This 1994 recording, directed by Riccardo Muti, stars Roberto Alagna, Renato Bruson and Andrea Rost.

0.0

Strauss: Elektra

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6.8

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