Metropolitan Opera

I've been looking over what the Metropolitan Opera is offering for the 2010-2011 season.

Most of the offerings will sound quite familiar even to those of us who haven't spent a lot of time in opera houses:

Wagner, DAS RHEINGOLD and DAS WALKURE
Verdi, LA TRAVIATA and DON CARLO
Mozart, DIE ZAUBERFLOTE
Donizetti, LUCIA Di LAMERMOOR
Strauss, ARIADNE AUF NAXOS
Mussorgsky, BORIS GODUNOV (this opera was apparently the inspiration for the family name of Boris and Natasha in the old Bullwinkle cartoons -- enough reason to love it), and
Bizet, CARMEN.

There are other performances scheduled that aren't quite so renowned, at least to an ignoramus such as myself. There is:

Adams, NIXON IN CHINA
Tchaikovsky, THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Berg, WOZZECK.

Let us pause on that last one. Alan Berg was, it appears, both the librettist and the composer of WOZZECK, an opera first performed in 1925 in Berlin, and first performed in the United States in Philadelphia in 1931. The opera was based on a play by Georg Buchner, illustrating the hopelessness of the lives of the poor.

I don't think I'll go see that one.