It tends to be the case, at least at Liceu, that in premiere nights musically the performances start off being a little wobbly and, sometimes, with luck they end well. Norma, the last opera for this season, wasn’t an exception. At the beginning there were many issues in all musical areas, but it ended reasonably well. The problem lies in the fact that in Norma the best musical numbers, the shiny ones, are located at the start of the piece and we couldn’t enjoy them...

As an extra gift we had the new critical edition by Fabrizio della Seta (with certain changes). Thus the roles of Enrichetta and –more- Arturo, but also those of Riccardo and Elvira become more alive (a pity that they didn’t include the final rondo written for Malibran, and more since here we had a real chance). Of course the risks of a still less dramatic structure –a problem with this opera since its first performance- are more evident, but the artistic interest of this...

The Met has gathered a lot of French talent around this short run of Massenet’s Manon: the bass-baritone Nicolas Testé as Count des Grieux, the tenor Christophe Mortagne as Guillot, Emmanuel Villaume in the pit, all of them in a production by Laurent Pelly. Vittorio Grigolo and Diana Damrau star as Des Grieux and Manon. Mr. Grigolo is now at home at the Metropolitan Opera where he gave a recital and sang in three different productions in the last year. Grigolo’s...