“It was after midnight on the Grand Canal here, and Plácido Domingo was standing on a floating stage slowly motoring toward the Accademia Bridge, singing the opening lines of a duet from “Don Giovanni’ ” for an upcoming episode of the TV series Mozart in the Jungle, writes Michael Cooper in Wednesday’s (7/20) New York Times. “Past episodes have featured the pianist Lang Lang playing Ping-Pong with the violinist Joshua Bell, the pianist Emanuel Ax shuffling his feet through an interactive dance video game, and the conductor Gustavo Dudamel…. With a cast that includes stars like Gael García Bernal [and] Bernadette Peters … the series also draws viewers who may not (yet) have subscriptions to their local orchestras.” Says Paul Weitz, the show’s executive producer, “All these artists, the reasons that they’re doing this show is because they feel like … it can bring the music to different people.’ ” Also featured on Mozart in the Jungle’s next season is composer Nico Muhly, who “wrote a piece for the show—an aria from an imaginary opera based on the story of Amy Fisher, who at the age of 17 became known as the Long Island Lolita.”
Posted July 21, 2016
Pictured: Plácido Domingo with Monica Bellucci and Gael García Bernal, shooting a scene for “Mozart in the Jungle” on a floating stage on the Grand Canal in Venice. Photo by Gianni Cipriano / New York Times
