On March 2, Eve Queler ascended the podium one last time as Music Director of the Opera Orchestra of New York to conduct a concert performance of the same work that inaugurated the company back in 1972: Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine. Following the thunderous applause that greeted her entrance, Ms. Queler raised her baton and proceeded to elegantly unwrap Meyerbeer’s exotic score to the near sold out Avery Fischer Hall for the next three hours. And what a score it is! Critics of Meyerbeer have dismissed his writing as calculated and cheaply affected, but this is bunk! Just the construction of Act One alone shows that Meyerbeer was a master musical dramaturgist. That he managed to entertain in the meantime is nothing but sheer bonus.
Eve Queler photo by Steve J. Sherman