The Enchanted Island

The reviews are in for this new world premier from The Metropolitan Opera. WHAT has been packing the house with opera patrons since we began HD simulcasts of the Met's season.

Enchanted Island is a lighthearted "mash-up!" The four young lovers from A Midsummer Night's Dream find themselves shipwrecked on Prospero's island of The Tempest, leading to a torturous web of comic and dramatic romantic entanglements. Break out all your Shakespeare and bone up before joining us at WHAT on January 21 and 28.

Enchanted Island is making news and here's why:

• William Christie, an early music specialist of worldwide acclaim, conducts—in his first Live in HD appearance.
  
  
• Creator Jeremy Sams worked with Christie to select the score, which is drawn from more than 30 operas, cantatas, and oratorios by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others. Most of the works inThe Enchanted Island are rarely performed in modern opera houses, which will allow audience members to experience music by the great masters of the Baroque era for the first time.
  
  
• The story, by Sams, combines two of Shakespeare’s best-known plays in a lighthearted “mash-up.” In The Enchanted Island, the four young lovers from A Midsummer Night’s Dream find themselves shipwrecked on Prospero’s island of The Tempest, leading to a tortuous web of comic and dramatic romantic entanglements.
  
  
• The gifted cast, led by Joyce DiDonato and David Daniels as the warring magicians Sycorax and Prospero, includes many of the best Baroque singers in contemporary classical music: Danielle de Niese, Luca Pisaroni, and rising stars Lisette Oropesa and Anthony Roth Costanzo.
  
  
• Legendary tenor Plácido Domingo appears in a star cameo as Neptune, god of the seas: the 136th role of his career.
  
  
• The visually spectacular production, by Phelim McDermott (director of Satyagraha, seen earlier this season), combines 17th-century theatrical devices with modern technology to create unique, theatrical effects.
  
  
• The production features video technology by the acclaimed designers 59 Productions. The revolutionary video effects in the opera are produced by projecting three-dimensional, moving video images on flat scenery to create scenery that appears to move on its own.

We've attached below for you some recent reviews of Enchanted Island. Stay tuned, we'll have a back stage tour of the production in the coming weeks !!

NY TIMES: “A terrific cast… a brilliant production team… fanciful, clever, and touching…”
(read the review)

ASSOCIATED PRESS: “Irresistibly entertaining… a light-hearted romp with enough fizz to send a dozen champagne corks popping”
(read the review)


HUFFINGTON POST:“A triumph… an unabashed extravaganza both musically and visually.”
(read the review)