sean corcoran year 3 in nyc

Tonight: saw Tristan und Isolde at the Met. This production has been cursed from the start...first Ben Heppner took ill, and then Deborah Voigt was pulled from the cast mid-performance last week. Voigt was back tonight, but Gary Lehman was still covering for Heppner. Lehman wasn't really up to the task, which was unfortunate--an earlier Tristan cover, John MacMaster, received a generally disappointing review from the New York Times. Lehman could barely be heard over the orchestra.

The music and production were lovely, but the biggest excitement of the night was Lehman's slide down the inclined Met stage after a stage fixture apparently broke. After sliding head first into the prompter's box, the opera stopped and curtains closed while doctors examined Lehman. He was fine, but the delay pushed the opera to 5 1/2 hours. Given Heppner's heft (or Voigt's pre-stomach surgery size), its probably a good thing Lehman was the one doing the tumbling.