You tell me
Which Met diva has just vetoed her renascence as a bel canto grande dame? So daunting a role must have given her cold feet, or at least mistle toe.
Labels: blind, la cieca ci guarda la cieca ci vede
POSTED at
1:55 PM
31 Comments:
Obvious, but I'll bite - Renee (Renascence) is backing out of mistletoe duty as Norma.
Gotta be that.
so, will they be scrapping the production also?
was this another fleming vanity production?
i hope they go through with it. and now, they will have the freedom to choose an appropriate soprano for the role.
i thought they were doing it this season with papian and guleghina?
la cieca, how does one access the previous topics in this new format? i can't find a link to that.
Definitely Renee and she made a very wise decision to scrub the Normas.
This was to have been in 2011-12, in a Robert Wilson (slo-mo) production according to Bradley Wilber's calendar at http://www.metmaniac.com/future.html.
hallelujah ... finally a good judgment call from her.
Ms. Creant: oops, that did vanish somewhere, didn't it. Will replace it immediately.
Ms. C: reload the page and you should see a new section in the sidebar titled "Previously on Parterre." There's a drop-down menu that leads to the archived postings.
I wonder if this means she won't do the concert performances of Norma she was scheduled to do with Levine and the BSO at Tanglewood next summer...
pat racette isn't singing butterfly tonight...how upsetting. does anyone know anything about maria gavrilova? i really hope its not going to be 200 bucks down the toilet
This is so sad. On tne "Butterfly" first performance I wasn´t able to hear the Sirius Broadcast and now it seems I will miss Racette´s Cio-Cio-San, there are no more "Butterfly" Broadcasts this season! Let us hope that Maria Gavrilova will sing well
Five years ago Maria Gavrilova was an excellent Butterfly in Miami and got some very good reviews at NYCO too.
If she hasn't been doing Abigaille and Ortrud since and keeps her nerves together, here's hoping she has a success.
i'm surprised gelb didn't try to get giordani to jump in for racette tonight! :>)
Brian - HAHAHAHHA
They could haul out a life-sized Cio-Cio-San puppet and let it mime the role while they play the Freni recording (or Albanese...or Tebaldi) and I'm sure most of the audience would be none the wiser.
I'll betcha dollars to doughnuts that Fleming will keep her Levine concert Norma commitment.
Who the hell wouldn't likely walk from a slow-motion Wilson production?
I watched those singers in obvious discomfort and pain in "Lohengrin" and they even expressed so openly, but how many like Fleming can afford to say "stick it?"
Brava Fleming!
Fleming as Norma is something I was definitely NOT looking forward to, regardless of production.
And whatever happened to the 3 Queens projects for Netrebko in 2012? Or are the operas the real subject of this thread? Norma is still listed for 2012 on MetManiac, the 3 Queens aren't.
On Sirius, Gavrilova sounded superb and a worthy replacement for Racette. Maybe I was hallucinating or I lost my mind, but Alagna in the last scene's "Adio," he gave a glmpse of Correlli's vibrato. I think Gelb, among other things, has turned the Met into a halfhoue of vocal recycling and rehab with some noticable results!
I was at the Butterfly and Gavrilova was vocally very impressive. Her voice initially seemed a little big and unfocused, but as she adjusted it just sounded big and good. I didn't find her terribly convincing as an actress, though. She didn't fit into this production's idea of Japanese-ness, and she and Alagna didn't seem to have any particular connection. But I'm sure she didn't have much rehearsal.
I still want to see Racette, but won't be able to make it this season... she's singing more Butterflies next year, no?
P.S. According to Gavrilova's site she's also covering Aida, Ballo, Manon Lescaut, and The Gambler, so you might see her yet.
Come out to San Francisco in Early December. She's doing three performances; admitedly in a less-than-spectacular production.
TKLogan -
Oh please. You actually took the Netrebko/3 Queens rumors seriously? Come now. I enjoy Netrebko's singing most of the time, but the only one of the three Donizettis that she could possibly undertake would be Stuarda. And Tanya Harding will be triple-axeling on the frozen lakes of Hell before the MET mounts Stuarda. I had thought years ago that Fleming might give a shot at Bolena (I could see the MET mounting this), but if she is passing on Norma, then I doubt she'll take on Bolena (a similarly difficult role, in some ways even harder).
Speaking of Fleming, La Cieca really has stoked the fires of gossip without truly disclosing the details: is Fleming pulling out of the MET production, the Zurich production, the Tanglewood production, all of the above, none of the above???
All the joy among the "Oooh, I can't stand the thought of Fleming singing Norma" crowd is probably misplaced. I can't imagine that she won't give it a go eventually. Maybe I'm wrong, but I bet she'll do it...
Good choice on Fleming's part. She may still do the concert version with Levine. That way, she'll still have the satisfaction of singing the music but won't have to commit to a whole run (and to Bob Wilson).
I think that Bob Wilson's style can be good for certain operas. For example, a semi-staged Tristan und Isolde could be fabulous. But Norma? His style would be completely at odds with that music.
As for the three queens, I had heard that it was going to be Fleming (Devereux), Gherghiou (Bolena) and Netrebko (Stuarda). Obviously, I'm not keen on Fleming's Elisabetta (or any bel canto role for that matter).
Evenhanded I heard from Gelb's lips that the 3 Queens are something 'we're looking into' so that was not 'just' a rumor.
As for Norma, I have no idea how Guleghina will pull it off, though I wish her well. Papian should be ok, we hear it's her signature role. The sound is a bit too dark for Norma.
I've seen my share of Wilson productions. He was relatively Popular in LA until the disaster that was his Parsifal (The Production that broke Placido Domingo), so I've seen several of his productions...or rather, I should say I've seen his production done with several different peices of music. Same fucking gimmick every time, and it only worked once, in Butterfly, where at least the Noh theater crap made sense. But the Wagner stuff? Aida? Ew.
Who the hell wouldn't likely walk from a slow-motion Wilson production? Hear, hear. I had the opportunity to sit in on some staging rehearsals for his Ring in Zurich. A while back some commenters lambasted Mary Zimmerman for misunderstanding some of the Italian text of Lucia. Hell, at least she'd read a synopsis. That Lohengrin was unbearable. Ms. Voigt looked like a sad blue iceberg, slowly inching stage right.
Dear La Cieca and everyone at parterre.com,
can I post an audio file of Renée Fleming? I am re-listening now to her Milano concert last year and I think her rendition of "O legere hirondelle" is worth hearing :-).
Bests, Shabran.
shabran: There are two ways to share an audio file.
1) You can email me the file or a link to the file, and I can post it here; or else
2) You can post the URL in the comments and anyone interested can download it.
La Cieca prefers method (1) because I can make sure the link stays live and can answer questions about the location, etc.
Let me know if you have any further questions: email lacieca@parterre.com
As a lurker until now, I am finally overcome with curiosity. And I am just curious, not trying to be provoking .. how does Fleming manage to sell out the Met when her singing is so far from acceptable?
I was in Milan with some friends for the Renée Fleming Recital that was her rentrée in Milan after the Lucrezia Borgia in 1998 where she was booed during the two performances she sang.
The recital was a benefit performance and she sang some Lieder and arias from Manon, Mireille, Rusalka, Die tote Stadt ecc. It was the first time I heard Renée live and it was a performance I'll never forget...
I have to be honest...I couldn't believe that the singer I heard in that concert was La Diva of Decca and of the Met...she had many problems during the concert, especially the pitch of her notes was a problem for her (every high B flat was different from the other in terms of pitch) and when she sang O legere hirondelle I didn't know (and the faces of the people around me exspressed the same feeling...) if I had to laugh or if I had to cry...and after the recital me and my frieds were wondering : where is the Beutiful Voice? We didn't hear nothing that can seem a beautiful voice...and the singer was less than acceptable.
The true benefit that night was done by the public of La Scala that didn't boo her again...
Sorry for my english but I hope that I will be understood...
Bests, Shabran.
Well, Shabran, maybe she had an off night. It happens to the best of them. Sorry.
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