Cast the first chat
UPDATE: La Cieca hears that Sondra Radvanovsky is ill this afternoon, which presumably means Juliana DiGiacomo will sing Lina.
Here, cher public, is your Saturday afternoon chat posting for Stiffelio. The performance begins at 1:00 PM.
The real-time chat is, as usual, over at La Casa della Cieca.
Hold the phone! Stiffelio and Otello are related because they’re both anti-heroes (so Jose Cura)? What? Stiffelio who forgives his wife is an anti-hero? And I always thought that Otello was a hero with a tragic flaw, a man easily hoodwinked, and this is what makes an anti-hero? How definitions have changed since I was in school.
Di Giacomo’s still young and if everyone lets her have the time to season into Verdi I think she’ll be OK. Sadly, there aren’t too many great Verdians still alive and teaching. Right now she’s holding her own on short notice. Cura sounds the way the reviews for a number of years have indicated–it’s a compromised voice and I suspect it’s too late to repair a lot of the damage.
Yes,I believe Will is absolutely right. A good many years ago Cura put out a solo recital CD disc and it was plain that he had burned his voice to a very noticable degree, on track after track. Thankfully I was able to return the disc to the shop. I am surprised he is still flogging his vocal contributions, on stage. And THIS situation is happening at the MET…..supposedly the doyen of opera spots in the World??!!
Here’s a possible option that perhaps should have taken place (since Cura also conducts): if he became the replacement for Domingo in the orchestra pit!
wladek ‘mentions the matter of people with opera subscriptions’ and in the current climate so often reported here ‘as an almost weekly occurance’….what can they be thinking ? After buying ahead in good faith, trusting the supposed promises of integrity and excellence by the MET .Then repeatedly being let down at the final call …with chops/changes and cast replacements with 3 rd rate hacks, over & over again. Any fair person would have the right to be dis-illusioned and refuse to renew subscriptions, when they become due.
Still young, you say…?
great diction, very good hefty voice with actual verve and significantly less fidgety than she who will sing violetta later this season..
whatever happened to this woman?
Pendatchanska? She’s a star now.
ok. maybe i just havent heard about her until now.
pendatchanska is not that young, is she?
She sings a fabulously temperamental Vitellia, Elettra and Donna Elvira on Rene Jacobs’s respective recordings of Clemenza di Tito, Idomeneo and Don Giovanni. I saw her as Gilda with WNO (Welsh) – must be 20 years ago when she was about 20 and I’m a bit surprised she isn’t a superstar. This Traviata clip suggests she could have been, few rough edges, but an amazing voice for a 17 year-old, no?
What’s wrong with this production, the singers are reasonably good, and yet nothing klics.
It is extremely clear what is wrong, it can be
said in one word: Domingo.
ok the duet was ok
I gave up my subscription to the Met Opera long ago and ignore it most of the time,but this flack over Stiffelio got me to tune in (late). At first I couldn’t find the Met and was listening to something I thought was
the Bert Lahr Opera Festival but then
realized it was the Metropolita Opera
and why I pay no attention to it. I
thought Bert Lahr sang better than what I heard to-day .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPP6L1_ooaQ&feature=related
Dorion !- bless you , now no one can say Stiffelio was any better than this . You give us proof .
isn’t Mr Lahr the real
artist opposed to what the Met has, considering the closing first
act singing if one wanys to call it that .
Off-topic by a thousand miles. I have accumulated over a thousand (s)crap discs — CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, mostly MP3 — which are stored in 100-disc cake boxes. Some are bad burns and therefore useless, but the vast majority are archive, duplicates, things I made to play while driving, transfers, and the like. If you would be interested in prowling through them in search of the good among the dross, ask La Cieca for my email address. I ask only reimbursement for postage, which would run less than $10.00 per cake box for domestic US mailings.
I would like one or more of them! It would be like getting a surprise treasure box!
I wash Cura had taken ill. No tenor, sorry, could have sung any worse: off pitch, sliding and skidding all over the place. Di Giacomo did very well indeed. Pure, flexible voice, with secure top. Bravo!
Cura has sounded atrocious for years. I’m confused as to why people are surprised. He was a technical wreck when he was emerging. His Met debut was flat out bizarre. Today sounded no different than expected.
Does anybody know who was backing Cura up in this run?
His substitute was probably Domingo, Himself!
Cannot help wondering what Aprile Millo might have sounded like in this part, say around 1990? Miss DiGiacomo has a nice voice, possibly for Gilda or Luisa Miller. I got zero dramatic expression/intention out of her singing.
The miracle of Don Jose Cura! How does he do it? That inimitable voce strangolata of his should have long since been over–the rattiest technical ability I’ve almost ever heard from a tenor. So sublimely indifferent, too.
Yes, as La Cieca said at the time (in a filk of I’m Still Here):
“Saw Cura’s debut – and wondered why he was here.”
He’s quite atrocious on computer-cast, was merely woolly in the house. Not a Met-worthy artist.
Hi Mr. Hans Lick — have missed U — hope you are busy and well.
When is the MET going to do our Huguenots??
Where was Julian Gavin????
Hiding under a rock.
Down in Australia at the moment, Vicar if I am correct. Frankly Gavin I beleive would be better to stay put in things like Manon or in Rusalka, which he does well, for the moment.
I noticed the Met Futures page has recently been updated over at Sieglinde’s website, and that S Radvanovsky is getting a new production of Roberto Devereux during the 2013-2014 season.
Does anyone have the scoop on this?
So this actually confrims what she said in an interview not too long ago. She’s going to work her way through the tudors and then sing Norma. I can already imagine hearing Rad singing “Quel sangue”.
And a ton of additional updates have been added to the page too! A new production of Cav/Pag for starters…