Our very own editor takes to the airwaves this afternoon when he is interviewed by John Schaefer on WNYC’s Soundcheck. As part of “Tristan Mysteries” week here in New York, JJ will play selections from a few of his favorite recordings of Tristan und Isolde, and probably will find time to mouth off a bit as well. JJ is skedded to appear sometime in the second half of the show, after about 2:30 p.m.
UPDATE: Here’s the interview.
Before he was famous, tenor Juan Diego Flórez was already puppylicious. Here at at age 16 he sings a pop song on a 1989 televised music festival. (La Cieca can’t quite make up her mind if he reminds her more of Duckie in Pretty in Pink or Slater from Saved by the Bell.)
“The Met’s lavish new production of Giacomo Puccini’s operatic trilogy Il trittico (heard April 20) was almost as enjoyable as it was long.” Our editor JJ’s somewhat contrarian position may be read in Gay City News.
La Cieca is totally in awe of the insightful (and totally enjoyable) reporting her baby sister OperaChic is doing on the most recent Angela Gheorghiu scandale. In what La Cieca chooses to regard as an early 50th anniversary hommage to one of the most infamous moments in the career of Maria Callas, la Gheorghiu has, yes, walked out of a production at the Rome Opera. It seems that at the prima, Renato Bruson took a bis of “Di provenza,” which (so OperaChic whispers) the soprano interpreted as an act of war. Gheorghiu obtained a doctor’s certificate and canceled her second [...]
The doyen of operatic stage direction has done it again! (Or, to be strictly accurate, he has done it for about the twentieth time, but who’s counting?) Thrill to the brilliantly innovative new production of La traviata Franco Zeffirelli just unveiled at the Rome Opera! Oh, if only we could have a production of Traviata just like this here in New York! Or, even better, if only we could have two productions just like this!
Our editor JJ chats with the lovely and talented Mona de Crinis in an interview for the Palm Springs Bottom Line, a publication whose title contains so many double entendres La Cieca lost count. Thrill yet once again to the saga of parterre box, the little zine that could, and JJ, the editor who would. And did. (Frequently.)
La Cieca hears that the Met’s new production of Il trittico will return in 2010, starring Patricia Racette as the three heroines.
Of course you’ve all heard of the Afro, the Jewfro and the Gayfro. So allow La Cieca to introduce you to the latest variant of this curly coiffure: the Castratfro, as modeled by countertenor Philippe Jaroussky in the opera Agrippina. In the interest of fairness, La Cieca should point out that the big hair was probably not the countertenor’s idea any more than the “Pippin” makeup. In fact, as himself, Mr. Jaroussky is quite the cutie!
Actress, singer, arts advocate, socialite, TV personality (and New Orleans native) Kitty Carlisle Hart has died at the age of 96. La Carlisle made her Broadway debut in 1933 in the musical Champagne Sec (a version of Die Fledermaus), then went to Hollywood for a brief stay highlighted by her turn as “Rosa Castaldi” in A Night at the Opera. (To die-hard opera queens, no performance of the “Miserere” from Il trovatore is complete without the interpolation of “the Kitty Carlisle high C.”) In 1948 the mezzo-soprano starred in the New York premiere of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia; later [...]
La Cieca has heard from two independent sources who attended today’s dress rehearsal of Il trittico at the Met, and the word they both use to describe the show is “wonderful.” Production values are lavish yet true to the works, the singing is never less than “very fine” and the orchestra under Maestro Levine sounds “superb.” Highest praise went to Maria Guleghina (Giorgietta) and Stephanie Blythe (all three leading mezzo roles, but especially La Zia Principessa). Friday night will likely be a long evening (the rehearsal ran four hours), but the buzz so far is that Il trittico will be [...]
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