Feels very much like a “the United Nations was just founded and world peace is coming!” kind of ethos.

I have particularly enjoyed the insta reels of someone who went to one of these protests and asked people, to no avail, if they could name a single woman athlete.

He participated in a seminar I was in, and I wish I remembered the details more specifically, but I definitely remember the feeling of "this guy is full of shit."

makes a lot of sense!

Constanzo is barely in the role by opera standards, and I have a lot of optimism for the future, but I would love to see coverage that acknowledges how things got started here!

I can’t stress enough just how revelatory that first O17 festival was, with high-powered opera commissions and reimagined standards popping up in every corner of the city for twelve days. And if they have had to later moderate for money and covid reasons, the core vision remained strong.

David Devan, who retired less than two years ago after running it for over a decade, is very much responsible for the company’s courageous vision of embracing new voices and ideas in an operatic context, and for most of his reign things were even more interesting and ambitious.

That aside, I think it was really wonderful, and I wish I could go back and see it again!

Also, I have to say, the whole “fuck trump” moment in the middle…I don’t know, it’s just not that provocative to tell a bunch of young queer opera operagoers in Philly to fuck the patriarchy. Kind of had a “liberal political speech at the Oscars” vibe.

I didn’t think JVB had the stage presence or voice to carry the role. Obvious she has a lot of presence in general, I know her career well. But I don’t it worked on a big formal stage; her big number in the middle came off quite pallid in comparison to the rest of the singing.

The biggest negative for me, which I say with genuine regret and a little nervousness out of the genuine respect I have for her and her work:

Elon Musk being blown up in his own rocket. 😂

Sets, costumes, and Michael R. Jackson’s libretto were all perfect, especially in that they took advantage of the rigid genre constraints of “opera” in interesting ways.

Other great musical moments: Nico Muhly’s choral polyphony (no surprise). Andy Akiho’s aggressive repetitive gestures. Missy Mazzli finding pathos in Santa Claus. Nicholas Newton’s portrayal of Roger and Nicky Spence as the libertarian neighbor.

On the other hand, lots of empty seats despite being mostly sold-out, and hard not to think it’s related to the tickets being basically free.

Large, boisterous, not opera-crowd; I am told reliably that based on a perusal of gay location-based hook-up apps there were a lot of people down from NYC.