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La Cieca’s spy, just returned from the Metropolitan Opera Guild luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria honoring Franco Zeffirelli, reports:

Lynn Redgrave did the voiceover for a video retrospective of Zeffirelli’s life, beginning with his origins as a “love child” (news to me).

But the highlight was Angela Gheorghiu. After performing two Romanian folk tunes nobody knew or really cared about, she did a very moving “O mio babbino caro,” literally singing it into his ear. Zeffirelli did a little comic bit of wiping his eyes and blowing his nose before embracing her. Nifty!

Zeffirelli and Gheorghiu are pictured above at Saturday night’s gala Bohème at the Met. Note also Paul Plishka (Alcindoro) and unidentified scruffy super.

The recent death of Anthony Minghella leaves at least two Met projects in limbo. First is the opera commissioned from Osvaldo Golijov, Daedalus, currently scheduled for the 2011-2012 season. Minghella was set to serve as librettist and to direct the completed work.

According to Variety, the late director’s plans at the Met also included a new production of Eugene Onegin to open the 2012 season, replacing the Robert Carsen staging currently used at the Met and telecast last year. (La Cieca’s guess: this Onegin is for Anna Netrebko and Mariusz Kwiecien).

Say what you will about Sylvie Valayre, the lady is certainly game, as can be seen both in this Regied-out scene from Nabucco:

… and this production of Macbeth where (apparently) the Konzept for the Lady was “Patti LuPone meets Patti LaBelle.”

Cher public, in response to a request from Nerva Nelli, La Cieca has added a new feature to the parterre.com main page; or rather she’s improved upon an old feature. You may remember the excerpts from your comments used to appear above the logo at the top of the page.

The new format will display the most recent comments directly below the top posting; that is, the second post on the main page will always be a list of the most recent comments.  You will find a list of excerpts from the most recent comments (with links to the complete comment) in the left menu bar. That way you dear people can easily catch up with (and continue) your ongoing conversation, colloquies and catfights. (The comments block right under the top story was very clunky-looking, La Cieca decided. It is possible to display more comment excerpts in the sidebar or to include more of each comment. Those of you who follow comments avidly may want to subscribe to the comments rss feed for parterre.com.

La Cieca just can’t get enough of the old Love-Death. So this week’s edition of Unnatural Acts of Opera begins a classic performance of Wagner’s music drama from the 1976 Bayreuth Festival under the magical guidance of Carlos Kleiber.

Tristan und Isolde (Act 1)

UPDATE: Well, you can spank La Cieca’s butt and call her “Tony,” because she foolishly neglected to check her facts before writing the script for tonight’s podcast. The Tristan in this performance is not Helge Brilioth (as your doyenne announces) but rather Spas Wenkoff.

UPDATE:  Be sure to join Commie-Winning Doyenne La Cieca for what is sure to be an historical webchat tonight beginning at 6:45 pm.

According to an announcement on the Met’s website, tonight’s performance of Tristan und Isolde featuring (together! for the first time!) Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt will be streamed live over RealPlayer. In honor of this eagerly-awaited partnership, La Cieca will host what will surely turn out to be the longest webchat in internet history, beginning at 6:45 PM and continuing until all our fingers go numb. Here’s a link to the chat, and remember to go to metopera.org at 7:00 to get the RealPlayer stream.

He’s a hunkentenor, and his name is Mark Tevis!