La Cieca is proud to “hostess” a classic performance of Semiramide as performed at La Scala on 17 December 1962. Heading the starry cast are Joan Sutherland (Semiramide), Giulietta Simionato (Arsace), Wladimiro Ganzarolli (Assur) and Gianni Raimondi (Idreno). You can listen to the first act on the Unnatural Acts of Opera page.
After the jump is the cover of Cecilia Bartoli‘s new CD, which apparently is all castrato music, all the time. Oh, it hurts! Read more »
Now that single tickets are available for purchase by Met season subcribers, and as the NYCO continues to dribble out details about casting, it’s time for La Cieca to start organizing her social diary for the opening of “The Season.” Where will Le Tout New-York be tooting this time around, cher public? Let La Cieca know in the poll after the jump. Read more »
The Royal Opera House, which in its past season glitzed up its programming with such gimmicks as a tabloid tie-in and a mezzo-soprano strapped to a wheelchair, now looks to be getting desperate. The venerable opera company has commisioned a “Twitter Opera,” with a libretto to be gleaned from sundry tweets posted via the popular social networking service. The resultant text will then be musicked by Helen Porter. “Current posts can be viewed at www.twitter.com/youropera.”
La Cieca hears that Angela Meade, triumphant in this summer’s Semiramide at Caramoor, has been invited back there in 2010 for her first Norma. Other future dates include Les Vêpres siciliennes in Vienna and a return engagement at the Met in Ernani. On the bill at Caramoor for 2011: that grandest of all grand operas, Guilliame Tell. Update: Caramoor maestro Will “The Trill” Crutchfield just chimed in: Semiramide was only a first hint of what this gal can do. Everybody should come next year and hold me accountable if I’m wrong. She hasn’t yet tapped her full capacities, but she [...]
Anna Netrebko will not sing Violetta in New York during the 2010-2011 season, La Cieca has learned. The long-expected La traviata (as discussed on Met Futures and elsewhere) was to be a version of the Willy Decker production the soprano did at Salzburg in 2005. According to an interview the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Netrebko has decided to pull out for two reasons, a sense of routine in this production she loves so well, and a concern that she might not be as effective in the staging as she was in the well-known DVD release. (That second part at least has [...]
Cher public, you may be interested or alarmed (as the case may be) to glean a little more information about the namesake of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, home to, among others, the New York City Opera. Mr. Koch is chairman of the board of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which finances such right-wing front groups as the Tax Day Tea Party (AKA “Teabagging”) and Patients United Now, an “AstroTurfing” shell organization dedicated to the prevention of health care reform.
Cher Public