Smartly done, Kashania, who guessed almost immediately that last week’s Regie quiz represented From the House of the Dead — in a production by Calixto Bieito, by the way. But even oil drums, truck tires and life-sized airplanes suspended over the stage might look a little prim in contrast to this week’s puzzler: Read more »
Squirrel was expecting boobs! People, there were no boobs, and for that, I was a little disappointed. Read more »
“I want to be judged for my music and nothing but my music.” This phrase, which Mascagni himself wrote to his publisher Sonzogno, is the key to understanding the very essence and existence of L’amico Fritz (1891).
Cavalleria rusticana, Mascagni’s first performed opera, had premiered the previous year to astonishing success, and had instantly catapulted him to the top sphere of the musical world. Virtually overnight he had become a true international celebrity. Women swooned over his youth and good looks. Hordes of young men rushed to the barber to have the so-called “capelli alla Mascagni”, a sort of pompadour. Read more »
Had I been living at the time Walter Felsenstein’s film of Verdi’s Otello was released in 1969, such then-innovative elements as the use of color on television and a vernacular translation might have given me new insights into this great opera. Maybe.
For those of us newly accustomed to watching The Met: Live in HD cinecasts and similar events in our neighborhood theaters, it is easy to forget that opera as cinema was once a very different experience. Ritter Blaubart, one in a series of seven films by Walter Felsenstein recently released on DVD, shows us the way it used to be — low-budget sets, highly managed direction, and the challenge of pairing up recording-studio singing with on-screen acting.
Poet of the podium Carlos Kleiber leads the final minutes of Tristan und Isolde from the mystic abyss of Bayreuth, circa 1975.
La Cieca invites all the cher public to a troika of talk during tonight’s Met season premiere of Il trittico. The performance begins at 8:00 pm.
The great Swedish soprano died earlier today. She was 82. [AP]
Cher Public