Happy New Year from the Met Premiere of Enchanted Island

Me

My date

It is funny, fantasy and baroque at the Met. What could be a better way to spend New Year's Eve with 3,800 of your "friends"? And a world premiere of a new opera with Plácido Domingo as the god Neptune and a host of wonderful singers.

The Times called it a Baroque mash-up and gave it a mainly rave write-up, explaining in part,

...Most of the “Enchanted Island” score is drawn from the operas, oratorios and cantatas of Handel, with a few of his hit tunes offset by more obscure excerpts. Many of the remaining vocal pieces are by Vivaldi. The works of the French Baroque composers Jean-Philippe Rameau, André Campra and Jean-Marie Leclair were mined for choral music and descriptive instrumental bits, at which the French excelled...

Mr. Sams modeled the tone of his libretto on the 18th-century English pastiches and masques written by John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Essentially “The Enchanted Island” is Shakespearean fan fiction. It takes place in the otherworldly realm where Prospero, hero of “The Tempest,” lives in exile with his daughter, Miranda. Who should turn up but the two pairs of honeymooning lovers from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” coincidentally shipwrecked on that very isle. When Ariel, Prospero’s sprite, replicates the bumbling mischief of Puck, the madcap mix-ups of “Midsummer” are reprised to both humorous and poignant effect. The plot is further thickened by the sorceress Sycorax, mother of the evil Caliban and archenemy of Prospero. She is merely mentioned in “The Tempest” but here becomes a star turn created for Ms. DiDonato...

Alas, we did not stay for the gala dinner and dance ($1690 per person). And no, we did not go to Times Square to see Lady Gaga at midnight.

"God's Favorite Prayers" yet another Baroque Mash-up