November 2008
The genre-defying art of Florence Foster Jenkins is reborn in her namesake, Katherine. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/XFVhHL75PQg” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
For those of you who are perhaps still wondering how (or whether) Medea ends. Medea, Acts 2 and 3
Our Own Gualtier Maldè reports: The Met’s orchestra and audience have found a new conductor to love: Daniel Barenboim.  The debutante conductor got a huge ovation before he even lifted his baton. Lots of applause for Danny B. all night from an adoring audience including a generous amount at his final bow. There was lots of touchy feely…
La Cieca thanks all of you for joining her for tonight’s chat! If you enjoyed tonight’s event, please drop by La Cieca’s Holiday Store.
Some of you cher public will no doubt see the pendulum as swinging too far in the other direction, but La Cieca finds this particularly convincing and exciting deptiction of the relationship between Don Giovanni and Leporello a refreshing change of pace after the listless staging of Mozart’s masterpiece currently in the Met’s repertory. The…
Well, the first thing La Cieca will say about the Met’s 125th Anniversary Gala is that for all its sprawling splendor it doesn’t look quite what you’d call entertaining. Or rather let’s say it looks as if it won’t sound very entertaining. The visual element — you know, computer-animated Marc Chagall murals and Waltraud Meier…
Just announced: Gerard Mortier has accepted the job of artistic director Madrid’s Teatro Real, beginning in 2010. [via AP]
Lord help the Mister who does fact-checking for the Times arts section! A correction published today thoroughly dispels all those rumors about  Lisa and Pauline, as seen in the Met’s current revival of The Queen of Spades. “They are friends, not sisters,” the correction helpfully informs us, and La Cieca will add that other than that one…
La Cieca hears that the “TBA” Donna Elvira at the Met for the December run of performances will be Dorothea Röschmann (left) previously heard at the house as Susanna, Pamina and Ilia. She replaces the previously announced Petra Maria Schnitzer (not pictured).Â
Not a Regie quiz, but worthy of note for the “what were they thinking” factor. Here’s a production of Otello directed by the usually visually acute Paul Curran. So why was costumer Paul Edwards allowed to get up the principal artists like they’re en route to a Cypriot fancy dress party? From left to right,…
As of this writing, Ben Heppner is still scheduled to go on tonight in the Met’s Queen of Spades, an event advertised on the company’s site with, under the circumstances, a rather unfortunate tag line:
In case you missed Friday night’s debacle.
The solution to our most recent Regie quiz? Seeing is believing! Download Yes, that’s right, the opera was again Aida! Now for this week’s Regie puzzler, which La Cieca promises is not going to be a Verdi opera set in ancient Egypt!
La Cieca has just about given up on the New York Times so far as accuracy goes, but it still rankles when a thoroughly disproven urban legend is casually quoted as factual truth. In a review of a novel called Winnie and Wolf, critic Patrick McGrath repeats the canard that Winifred Wagner supplied the paper…
La Cieca is always delighted to hear the merest whisper of a rumor that her old, old, old friend Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh has been encouraged to grace the lyric stage yet once more. Therefore it is with the almost unutterable joy that your doynne notes that “La Dementia” will sing again in 2009 as a…
A tipster writes: Word is: The artistic administraion of the Met, always concerned about maintaining the highest possible levels of intenational artistic experience for their paying audience, are allowing Marcello Giordani to decide, after his Berlioz matinee, whether or not he wants sing the 8pm Butterfly.
In an interview in the Washington Post, Anne Midgette and Ruth Ann Swenson say the word “box” so often it starts to sound dirty.
Another astonishing discovery on YouTube, pointed out by a very cher member of the cher public. Courtesy of tenore23, here is Aprile Millo singing “Tu che le vanita” at the Arena di Verona. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/hmDguWslDUs” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
“The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead – they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.” That’s how La Cieca (as author of…
For your compare-and-contrast delight, here’s WNO’s alternative poisoness. You surely all remember the earlier exponent of this role.
… but La Cieca finally got the chance to get her beauty winks last night following a weekend of moving house. The Sunnyside Studios (where our editor JJ and his lovely vis-a-vis cohabit) are now on the ultra-fashionable northern side of Queen Boulevard, and it looks like they got out while the getting was good,…
Most everyone caught an “Oriental” vibe from our previous Regie quiz, but only one of you guessed correctly that the opera depicted was Aida, as performed at Staatstheater Stuttgart in October 2008, directed by Karsten Wiegand. Our next little quiz is right after the jump.
Anna Netrebko has her work cut out for her…
“I’m also confident that both the long-overdue New York premiere of Daniel Catán’s sumptuous Florencia en el Amazonas and Spike Lee’s fiery new staging of The Gospel at Colonus—a retelling of the Sophocles in the form of a gospel church service—will continue to bring new visions to our audiences and new audiences to our vision. …
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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