November 2006
So, more scoop on that “emergency meeting” La Cieca hinted at yesterday. It seems that the costumes for the Met’s new production of The First Emperor arrived from China in the last couple of weeks. La Cieca is told that when the boxes were unpacked, the wardrobe staff complained of a strong chemical odor emanating…
That popular and versatile artist TBA will enjoy a busy December at the Met alternating the roles of Mimi and Musetta in La boheme. La Cieca wonders if Cristina Gallardo-Domâs is “indisposed” with the same “health” “problems” that beset Susannah Glanville. Anyway, G-D is out of the rest of 2006, though she’s still on the…
La Cieca has been informed that there’s an emergency meeting called this afternoon at the Met on the subject of, well, let’s just say, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Let’s hope staffers are able to clear the air!
As La Cieca mentioned last month, the 2007-2008 Met season will include a new production of Satyagraha, the Gandhi-themed opera by Philip Glass and Constance De Jong. And now La Cieca has been informed that there is actual basis in fact for her wild surmising. Darling Dawn Fatale drew La Cieca’s attention to an announcement…
A sneak preview of Natalie Dessay‘s Lucia, scheduled for next season’s opening night at the Met. La Cieca hears that Dessay’s first Met Lucia will be a new production, but she guesses it will not be this one from the Opéra Bastille (bootlegged about six weeks ago). Though, to tell the truth, this soprano would…
On this day of Thanksgiving, there are so many things for which La Cieca would like to give thanks. But enough about that. Here’s one thing for which La Cieca would like to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Among the participants in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving parade: none other than The Beautiful Voice, or, as…
Live, unedited, current and obviously unauthorized opera video. If you discover any such snippets on YouTube, let La Cieca know.
Which Met prima donna recently enraged her maestro when she forgot (or refused) to bring him out a curtain call at his final performance of the run? In recounting the story of this obvious snub, the “always friendly and downright jocular” conductor becomes so emotional that he begins to gesticulate as wildly as he does…
Beverly Sills was nothing if not precocious (and La Cieca means that in every way — listen to the way the little sexpot purrs, “G’bye, Uncle Sol” at the end of the clip!) Anyway, here she is at somewhere between seven and nine years of age in the 1938 film short Uncle Sol Solves It.…
Fred Kirshnit joins the legions dazzled by the radiance that is Millo. In The Sun, Kirshnit writes People who love Aprile Millo really love Ms. Millo, and so interspersed among the nearly capacity crowd dressed in their finery as the National Italian American Foundation honored the soprano were the occasional young man or pair of…