The Great Gatsby: Ensemble Parallèle

Jason Victor Serinus on January 19, 2012
John Harbison

The world premiere of Jacques Desjardins’ chamber orchestration of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby gives us a taste of the late 20th century operatic premiere the Metropolitan Opera considered important enough to include in its multi-CD tribute to James Levine’s 40th year on the podium. The cast is exciting, and includes some fine knowns (Susannah Biller, Jason Detwiller, Dan Snyder, Bojan Knezevic, and Erin Neff) and a few artists new to us (Marco Panuccio and Jordan Baker). With Nicole Paiement and Brian Staufenbiel in charge, expect a production that has the potential to either ignite or incite.