From the Orders Report for La Cieca’s Amazon store for October 23, 2009:
And a reminder, cher public, even though La Cieca is coming to you from an alien server until tomorrow, the Little Shop of Arias is still in business.
“Gloria Davy, Claudia Muzio, Renata Scotto and Lynne Strow Piccolo.”
Tonight’s chat during the season premiere of La Damnation de Faust from the Met begins at 8:15 pm.
“…at the height of her crippling attacks of stage fright, her vocal coach had to physically push her on to the stage of the Met’s new production of The Marriage of Figaro, in which she was singing with Bryn Terfel and Cecilia Bartoli.” [Times Online]
If you’re wondering why the relatively inexperienced George Steel was tapped for the demanding job of hauling the New York City Opera out of the basement — instead of front-runner Francesca Zambello, well, maybe this is why: Zambello, currently in London creating a joint Royal Opera and Royal Ballet production of Tchaikovsky’s comic rarity “The Tsarina’s Slippers” … in discussion with producers Ben Sprecher and Louise Forlenza over whether “Rebecca” should open in North America or London…. three-quarters of her way through a Ring cycle for San Francisco Opera and is developing an opera-house-scale version of “Show Boat” at Chicago [...]
I’m sure you’ve all read by now about the “famous Argentine opera diva” (who, by the way, nobody has ever heard of, so she’s not famous; and she doesn’t sing opera, so she’s not an opera diva; and at the rate she’s going, she’s probably going to turn out to be from Bolivia)… but, anyway, I’m not going to quote the name of this woman who got into a shoving match with restaurant staff after they fielded complaints that her speaker-phone conversation was disturbing other diners, because I’m pretty sure it’s being pushed by her publicist, since ordinarily police reports [...]
Maestro Wenarto shows us how Tosca should be done… as directed by that exciting Regie wunderkind Luc Bondage.
The film of that awful play Master Class will begin lensing next week in Detroit. Faye Dunaway directs and stars as Maria Callas. [Detroit Free Press] UPDATE: Edited to include this much funnier photo suggesting La Dunaway has decided to play the Audra McDonald part.
Cher Public