parterre box

As La Cieca first reported back in March, Jeffrey Vanderveen, recently split from IMG, will now head up Universal Music Classical Artists Management and Productions, a division “meant to provide management services for and produce live events for prominent classical musicians.”

IMG has responded by filing filed suit against Vanderveen and other Universal honchos, claiming criminal conspiracy and theft, specifically the improper soliciation of certain clients who have made the move from IMG to Universal. Among these clients are Anna Netrebko, Elina Garanca, Karita Mattila, Joseph Calleja and Thomas Hampson.  A story by Steve Smith in the New York Times this morning adds that Rolando Villazón is also considering jumping ship to Universal as soon as his IMG contract expires.

La Cieca has to say that the funniest health code violation story she’s read in, well, days and days is the AP item entitled “NYC Health Department: Mice at Met Opera.” The hilarity begins in the very lede of the piece, which reads

On-stage villains aren’t the only vermin at the Metropolitan Opera.

Just as the headline promises, somewhere within the Met building were found mice or anyway “evidence of mice or live mice.” (La Cieca is not sure which of these possibilities is more likely to provoke her to behave like women standing on tables screaming in early sixties sitcoms.) Anyway, the final line of the story provides what is surely the most delicious double entrendre of the year so far:

The Met, which opened in 1966, also was penalized for using “unacceptable material.”

No video for this event (yet) but here are the ladies of The View – Sherri Shepherd, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Whoopi Goldberg — in competition to decide which of them has the greatest ignorance of opera. (Today was one of Barbara Walters‘ frequent days off, which is a pity because she is at least an occasional operagoer.)