La Cieca has obtained a copy of the main part of the email sent to AGMA members by the organization’s national executive director Alan Gordon in the wake of yesterday’s abortive meeting with NYCO’s George Steel. Read more »
La Cieca’s insider whispers (or, more accurately, shouts): “AGMA walked out of the meeting on Monday. They refused to negotiate. Gordon said Steel‘s demands were more destructive then expected, worse than 802′s.”
The New York City Opera season is scheduled to begin in 135 days.
“Il trovatore was premièred in January 1853 and Traviata a couple of months later in March. The wonderful duet at the end of La traviata Act I brings to mind clearly the ‘Miserere’ from Act IV Il trovatore, and when Alfredo sings ‘Dei miei bollenti spiriti’ there is something of ‘Di quella pira’ about it [a]nd the following scene between Violetta and Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont, uses some of the ‘haunting’ music from Trovatore’s Scene 1.”
Then again, this critic finds Renée Fleming‘s Violetta reminiscent of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara. Thus we find ourselves faced with a crucial question: might an American girl’s attempt at Verdi’s consumptive courtesan eclipse ‘Jo’ Barstow‘s definitive portrayal? [MusicWeb International]
Live, from “The Concerthall of Hoorn,” which sounds like a performance venue somewhere in Middle Earth, it’s the return of The Family Pondman! This time Walther and Lonne do a Siegmund/Sieglinde variation on the first act of La bohème.
Antonina (Leyla Gencer) regrets the error of her ways in the third act of Donizetti’s Belisario, the latest episode of Unnatural Acts of Opera.
An entirely new plot element in a Shakespeare text? The story turns on a dispute between Oberon, the manipulative king of the fairies, and Tytania, his willful wife, over the guardianship of a changeling boy. Oberon badly wants that boy as his henchman. But Tytania, who has seen the brutal way her husband sometimes bullies Puck, does not want him near the child… The seasons alter indeed when not only stage directors but now critics invent drama out of whole cloth.
Our Own CerquettiFarrell guessed correctly, if cautiously that all those people in short pants were doing Salome. To be precise, it’s a Christopher Alden production for Saarbrücken. Next up, an opera that looks like it might be Salome , but it’s not. So what is it? (Remember, cher public, no blurting! If you have seen this production, sit quietly while everyone else plays the game!)
An old clip, but worth reviving: Elizabeth Vidal sings “La méditation de Thaïs.”
Cher Public