Headshot of La Cieca

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  • Nerva Nelli: Apparently Billingsgate has Ingrid Steger and Carol Yahr sta...
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scream city

skylight_1

Your dithery doyenne sometimes gets so bogged down in local drama such as the continuing story that is NYCO that she overlooks the occasional outlying scandale. Such is the case with what she will henceforth call The Mishegas in Milwaukee. 

This brouhaha over the direction of the Skylight Opera has (per La Cieca’s informant) escalated into “rescinding contracts of singers who made disparaging comments about Skylight on Facebook… and over 20 artists contracted for the upcoming 50th season withdrawing from performances.”

To get up to speed on this whole fiasco, La Cieca suggests you spend some time poring over tuesdays, an arts blog by the apparently indefatigable “actor, director, composer, playwright, t-shirt salesperson, former telemarketer… wedding band singer, and kimball organ demonstrator in the local shopping mall (at eight years old)” Tony Clements.

eyes wide shut

Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala are seen (briefly) in this clip from Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, as produced at Baden-Baden.  Read more »

donizetti’s elixir easy to swallow

So says Our Own JJ, who had a lovely time at Caramoor’s L’elisir d’amore, and lived to tell the tale at musicalamerica.com.

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I have a little secret I’d like to impart

La Cieca has just heard the very interesting news that Gotham Chamber Opera, in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History and in association with American Repertory Theater, willl present Il mondo della luna by Joseph Haydn, in a new production staged by Diane Paulus, director of Hair, which received the 2009 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. Il mondo della luna will run from January 19 – 28, 2010 at the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. “Audacious!” yelps Neal Goren, Artistic Director and founder [...]

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island magic

A preview of sorts of next season’s Met production of Armida. This is Herself, as heard  last week in Prague.

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is that a regie in your pocket?

No wonder so many of you had “trouble” with last week’s Regie quiz, since the opera represented was — no, not Madama Butterfly – but Trouble in Tahiti, a production at the Munich Opera Festival directed by Schorsch Kamerun. (The leading roles were luxuriously cast with Rod Gilfry and Beth Clayton.) The casting for this week’s opera is somewhat less luxurious, but the director’s concept is decidedly outrageous. Any guesses which opera they’re performing? 

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off the record

La forza del destino from the New Orleans Opera (1953) continues on Unnatural Acts of Opera. Meanwhile, La Cieca comments about all that publicity JJ has been receiving lately.

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you, the diva

La Cieca is simply beside herself to announce what she is confident will be both the biggest and most exciting parterre box competition of all time. This competition is called “Reading the Letter,” and it will test that most basic of opera queen skills, i.e., pretending to be a soprano. After the jump, La Cieca will explain how it works: 

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