LouLife [1]

The Met’s Match
The final and last-of-the-season opportunity to experience the small miracle of the Metropolitan Opera’s telecasts to Tinseltown presents itself on April 28 with a live relay of Puccini’s off-puttingly titled Il Trittico. This is the sort of splashy, large-scale work that shows off this innovative technology to best advantage, in part because it is exactly the sort of very grand opera experience the Met does better than anyone on earth. It is also the sort of piece few regional opera companies would want to tackle on their own, so rather than competing with the Kentucky Opera, it instead complements the local season. The title translates as “The Triptych,” which fans of church architecture know means a work of art in three panels. Here it describes three short and contrasted operas, each with its own appeal. First is an intensely dramatic work called Il Tabarro, as fine a piece of blood and thunder as the art form allows. Next is the occasionally syrupy but very melodic Suor Angelica, featuring a naughty nun, a dead baby and a cameo appearance by the Virgin Mary. Ideal Saturday afternoon entertainment. The triple bill ends with that great rarity — a genuinely funny comic opera, Gianni Schicchi, which features the exquisitely melodic aria “O mio babbino caro.” The reasons few regional directors would attempt Il Trittico are all financial: The show requires three complete sets of scenery and costumes — bad enough — but also three complete casts. Ruinously expensive for any but the Met. And at $18 a ticket, Tinseltown compares quite favorably with a Met ticket of approximately $250 for a mid-orchestra seat. April 28, 1:30 p.m.

Egg-stravaganza
Glassworks, at 815 W. Market St., offers numerous opportunities as Easter approaches to involve the little ones, and some larger ones, in the provocatively entitled program “Eggs . . . Blown Not Laid.” At $40 an egg it is not cheap, but if it produces a budding Faberge in the family, it’ll be well worth it. Glassworks opens the doors of its “hot shop” and allows visitors ages seven and up to work one-on-one with highly-skilled glassblowers to create individualized glass Easter eggs. The glass is pulled in molten state from furnaces at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This month’s times are noon-5 p.m. on April 1 and April 6 and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on April 7, 14 and 28. Reservations are required, 992-3056.

Mounted at Mellwood
Mellwood Arts & Entertainment Center gets in early Derby mode with an exhibition featuring the equine art of one of its resident artists, Jamie Corum, who also teaches at Bellarmine and is a contributor of handcrafted work distributed to donors in the “Art for the Animals” fund-raising campaign. This gifted equine artist will display at Mellwood with six other painters of horses through May 28. The thing to do is to visit on a warm day when the Cliftonfacility’s mellow brick ambience is at its most inviting. Have lunch outside, visit a couple of exhibitions and imagine you have been transported to Trastevere or the Left Bank. A glass of cheap red wine and a smelly cigarette might complete the illusion, as would a baguette tucked under the arm and a beret at a jaunty angle.

Con Mucho Gustav
There is something about the symphonies of Mahler that makes any of them an occasion. Long neglected in the non-German world, they were brought to prominence by the great Leonard Bernstein. It was his impassioned advocacy of Mahler that established the Viennese master’s American reputation. So it is cause for excited anticipation that the Louisville Orchestra will feature Mahler’s wonderful First Symphony, known as the Titan, at its concerts on Thursday, April 19, at 10:30 a.m., and Friday, April 20, at 8 p.m. The pleasure is all the keener for knowing that Lawrence Leighton Smith will return to conduct. Don’t be put off by the daunting nickname Titan; this is a lushly melodic work with immediate charm and likability.

Final Thought
It seems a pity that as temperatures rise the arts season cools off. How nice it would be if we had a summer opera season to look forward to, as in Cincinnatiand St Louis, or a major summer orchestra festival like Tanglewood. Ideas have been floated in the past — Brad Broecker gave it an honorable try with American musicals some years back and the Kentucky Center had success last year with big-name popular artists. A summer festival of the arts would make wonderful sense for the Kentucky Center.