park and bark?
With the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2008-2009 season barely a month away, La Cieca is already half-drunk with the sheer glamour of it all. Not only will this first night boast a bouquet of bonbons from Renée Fleming‘s greatest rôles (and, frankly, aren’t they all?), but the musical experience will be enhanced by the tetralogy of fabulous couture gowns in which the Diva of the Future will be swathed.
As if this sensual surfeit were not more than enough to reduce even the most jaded operaphile to a quivering mass of jelly, the evening will achieve its climax with the launch of that ebony-accorded aroma of which we will surely all be redolent ere long, La Voce Renée Fleming.
The lights! The glamour! The paparazzi! The elegant procession of boldfaced names into the Metropolitan Opera through the Lincoln Center’s legendary Josie Robertson Plaza… Wait, just a moment, what was that?
Well, cher public, thank goodness it turns out that the red carpet VIPs will not in fact have to wend their way through the parking garage; in fact, the glitterari will be able to enter the Met the way Gelb intended, through the front doors. Though it does seem like trying to funnel 4,000 people in from Damrosch Park might lead to a bottleneck or two. Keep an eye on the Met website for updates on how exactly one should approach the Fleming Follies.
Oh, and for those of you who prefer to enjoy your opera snippets al fresco (and I think you know who you are), the now-traditional opening night simulcast will take place, though for this year at least it will be relocated to Fordham University’s North Meadow. Now doesn’t that sound just bucolic?
Oh, heavens! La Cieca has just been informed that, with the Plaza under still under construction on September 22, opening night — The Fleming Gala! — will be forced underground!
Literally. As it stands now, it looks like the only way into the Met on opening night will be through the Concourse. Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, another way of saying “through the parking garage.”
Glam?
Slightly tangential I know, but what’s wrong with a young lyric tenor getting a gig as the Emperor in Turandot? It’s one of those parts that people only ever play at 25 or 65.
Ruxton: You may call it gossip or ‘character assassination’ because I am not being specific enough….for you. Suit yourself. Listen I am not in any way wishing or attempting to say who is, or was shagging somebody on the casting couch, was I? What’s your gripe, then? .
Harry- gossip is not just “who was shagging who”. Gossip is unsubstantiated hearsay…e.g. I believe Harry used to audition for everything – Harry has cancer. Anyhow, let’s leave it.
Ruxton, how do you know that Harry has cancer??? Are you an oncologist?
or perhaps just play one on parterre box…
hehehehe you norti man High C’s
Listen Ruxton , if your reduction-like ‘always take the opposing view’ stance is anything to go by, anything you say here has also the same empty credence of being ‘mere grossip’as you describe.
I do not circulate stories unless based on certain things(1)I had directly spoken to a trusted independant person present at some particular incident, or the person was directly involved in said incident – having the necessary creditials to judge that situation(2)I personally witnessed said incident(3) I was privy to certain information, private at that time but no longer revalent to others’, that is singers and artists’ career or well being(4) I was ‘in the business’….somewhere?
Still to this day, I am not willing to harm (as you would accuse) present day singers’ careers and livlihoods.
In the past I personally was in the position to ‘tangle directly with many of the people- you would want to defend, without question’. Fat arse egos, drunk with power, setting out to destroy, or dishearten talent. Using every machination in the book out of sheer spite, lies, self delusions or influence. Who are the real losers? The paying audiences, never seeing ‘behind the scenes’ what possibilities were mooted or created, then not acted upon. Are I disgruntled? Hell, No! Glad to out of the ‘opera fishbowl’ existence. I look back more with increasing amusement as the years go past, how inconsequential it all was. I also consider myself part of that ‘collective joke’. Ask yourself how, for decades I have not had to pay to see an opera performance? What does that say, if you are not dumb? I don’t think they allow it ‘for my good looks’. You might though Ruxton , in your child-like naive approach. You remind me of the acid tongued ‘drag’ Edna Everidge and her mocking sense of ‘fucked up niceness to everyone’. Pull the possum out of your arse, it is irrating you more than any ‘autopsy piles from the Opera’.