The genre-defying art of Florence Foster Jenkins is reborn in her namesake, Katherine.
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 with the orchestra during his travels to and from the pit. He conducted from a chair, like Levine does, sometimes leaning back against the wooden partition of the orchestra pit and laying his head on the railing as if to bask in Wagner’s orchestral beauties. At the end of the show the orchestra stayed in the pit and gave him a standing ovation while he blew kisses from the stage. Read more »
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 men are Simon Keenlyside and Kyle Ketelsen; they are eventually joined by Veronique Gens as Donna Elvira.
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 prancing about in a copy of Rosa Ponselle’s Carmen drag — will likely achieve a level of instant camp approaching that of Rosie O’Donnell’s variety show last night. (La Cieca had no room for the phrase in the previous run-on sentence, but, anyway, good old Rosa’s “controversial” toreador pants ensemble was of course designed by “dyke, ya know” Valentina.)
Leaving aside such questions as “are there really more than a dozen people in New York iwho are really panting to hear Natalie Dessay sing Violetta,” what La Cieca wonders is: can there be a less appropriate selection for a gala than the final scene from Parsifal, and to close the first half (a la Birdie Coonan) yet? Surely someone at the Met realizes that as soon as the audience starts applauding, some heligie Kunst nut will bellow, “Shuddup! It’s a sacred festival play!”
On the other hand, La Cieca feels that in the current political climate it is a deliciously subversive act for the Met to program this music drama for its anniversary, since the company’s 1903 premiere of the work constituted perhaps the greatest example of theft of intellectual property in operatic history. Pirate-y!
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 time in college, there is nothing else between them!
No correction has been offered so far for Anthony Tommasini’s assertion that Ben Heppner’s parlous vocal condition on opening night was the result of “a cold.” Â
Cher Public