parterre box

119 comments

• Greg (Lyric subscriber) says:

  I’m been a subscriber and doner to the Lyric in Chicago for over 25 years. We just about didn’t subscribe for next year – there’s only two or three things that were important enough (for us) to warrant maintaining the subscription. One, we do want to see Porgy and Bess. Two, we do want to see Lulu. Three, we love our seats and would never get them back if we gave them up for one year.

  I also wish the Lyric would expand its season. They’ve been at 95% + fill rates for years (and had several years of 100% +). I assume they’ve done the research and have found that the market it saturated. Also, I know the house is used the rest of the year for various ballet, etc., and those contracts have certainly been signed for years into the future.

  I love the physical aspect of the house – walking into the main foyer still takes my breath away the first time each year – especially after the restoration a few years ago.

  on June 26, 2008 at 1:23 PM
• brooklynpunk says:

  Cocky:

  Eight…give or take one or two, seems to be the magic number in the other major Houses in the States–HGO/WNO//LA all chime in on that number-while San Francisco ups it by a few—next season they’re at 13, I believe.

  It is EXPENSIVE– without much, if any, public funding to mount more than that for companies without the clout of The MET..and also to vie with each other for casting

  on June 26, 2008 at 1:24 PM
• High C's @ 4:20 says:

  Greg (Lyric subscriber) Meet ya at intermission of P&B on 12/19 (or at Steamworks afterwards)

  on June 26, 2008 at 1:38 PM
• balabanov11 says:

  Levine’s main problem with singers is that he has no technical knowledge of singing, and is constantly encouraging sopranos to sing outside of their fach (most obviously in trying to fill the Verdi soprano roles he loves to conduct). His latest casualty is Frittoli, whom now, like most of his other Verdi-lites, sings with an overly-full, vibrato-laden sound that doesn’t last thru the rehearsal process.

  It’s not a surprise, considering that he hates the 2 operatic periods most conducive to good technical singing – baroque and bel canto.

  on June 26, 2008 at 2:07 PM
• kashania says:

  Cocky:

  >Is the management just extremely cautious?

  Yes, being overly cautious is their “thing”. I’m a fundraiser and my instincts tend to be on the cautious side as well. Much as I love artistic daring, I wouldn’t condone it if it resulted in big deficits. But the Lyric is too fiscally conservative even for my tastes. They sell out regularly, have a very solid subscriber and donor base and on solid financial footing. If any company can afford to take a risk once in a while, it’s the Lyric Oprea of Chicago.

  As for the opera house, I find it classy and beautiful. I only heard one performance in there but didn’t find the acoustics to be so bad.

  on June 26, 2008 at 2:10 PM
• mrsjohnclaggart says:

  The Virgin Mary (am enemy for life) was pissing on me last AM — I have checked all my scores and it’s true that Schreker was evidently an accepted spelling. It seems as though the composer’s father, a painter of rich people in Monaco, preferred the less ‘Jewish’/Austrian spelling of Shreker but the composer seems to have gone back and forth. Apologies to all offended by a know it all!!! Mr. John, my late husband, would have known what to do.

  on June 26, 2008 at 3:01 PM
• lottecrabtree says:

  Am not familiar with Herr Schreker, but a performance of his works would probably have people packing the hall expecting to see green orgres and La Diaz, or something relating to Nosferatu.

  on June 26, 2008 at 6:10 PM
• Scaramuccio says:

  No offence taken, Mrs C, and I learnt something at least about Shreker/Schreker.

  What I’d really like to know the truth about is whether Nina Koshetz really was called Koshits at the time of her affair with Rachmaninov (and her incipient one, his diaries now tell us, with Prokofiev) – and whether it really was Prokofiev who advised her to use ‘Koshetz’ (or even just Koshets) in the USA for obvious reasons.

  Have you heard this woman? What a personality. It also transpires from the diaries that a spirit master dictated some of her songs. SSP almost believed that to be true, because all the previous ones had been totally awful and these were quite good.

  on June 26, 2008 at 6:49 PM
• mrsjohnclaggart says:

  Koshits made a series of aria recordings in Russia that are thrilling if slightly crude technically — it was a great voice roughly handled. Later on, down on her luck and monstrously obese in LA (she’s ‘color’ in a couple of movies that need a Russian atmosphere and in fact I rather resemble her) she made a number of insane, roughly sung and grossly inaccurate recordings of Rakmaninoff songs. However, English collectors have always been very fond of these, whether because they are instant camp or for other reasons I can’t say. She sobs a great deal as do I. No one believed she had had the affair with Rak and he denied it (he of course was long married with daughters). Also, there were those who thought his association with Tchaikovsky when he was chicken (Pytr’s type) and his living with the notorious queen Siloti after his main piano teacher threw him out were indications that like many aristocratic Russians including many of the Romanovs, he was omnisexual and perhaps hetero only for procreation at least as a youth. He was later thisclose to the insane queen Vladimir Horowitz. They played the world premiere of his best big piece The Symphonic Dances four hands in Vlodya’s living room — RCA, which that them both under contract, refused to record that — the morons and fools!

  Rak made many recordings, they are all fabulous if you like wild, crazy and it goes without saying virtuosic piano playing, the virtuosity at the service of a fabulous musical mind (I say nothing of his actual music, though the piano pieces are mostly thrilling and the songs are wonderful, it’s the bigger forms that get him in trouble). I still think his is the greatest Carnival, despite no repeats and his changing the harmony and adding bass notes (also rolling chords, which no one does anymore). A very good collection of Rak pieces all amazing is by Gavrilov on EMI and then there is that insane queen Earl Wild’s arrangements of about twelve songs for piano, a mad CD I couldn’t live without (also Kozlovsky with orchestra and Obukhova any way you can find her for the songs are must haves).

  Transliterating Russian is very tricky, I don’t know if Koshits is really the most accurate transliteration of her name. But many opera singers changed their names, Emma Albani for one.

  on June 26, 2008 at 7:45 PM
• lottecrabtree says:

  La Kosh getting a Spirit to help her compose suddenly has brought up memories of Mrs. Brown, a lady in Eingland in the 60s who claimed Beethoven, Schubert, and a bunch of other male composers sat in her living room and help her compose at the piano. There was even a recording of her/their pieces. Anybody know what ever became of her and her? music. And Happy birthday James. May you last as long as Mark Ryzin.

  on June 26, 2008 at 8:31 PM