Margaret took the night off tonight to attend Terence McNally’s play The Ritz, so producer Mary Jo Heath and I managed on our own for tonight’s performance of Aida. This worked out well, since our first guest to interview was diva Renée Fleming, a friend of Mary Jo’s. La Fleming was casual and candid, talking about her Violetta in La Traviata. She plans to retire the role after a few more scheduled performances outside of New York, since, as she said, she doesn’t care to repeat roles too often. During the second intermission, I got to interview two of our favorite guests—supers Brendan Irving and Brian Baldwin. These guys, accomplished actors who are regulars on the Met stage, have a unique perspective on productions and are always good for some excellent backstage gossip. Unfortunately, they were both well behaved the night I interviewed them, although I learned a lot about the Macbeth production and the upcoming War and Peace.

This entry was posted by Will Berger on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 8:18 am and is filed under 2007–08 Season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.