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  • Quanto Painy Fakor: If course people who sing at the MET pay for private coachin...
  • La Valkyrietta: There does not seem to be her Ernani Involami in youtube. ...
  • kashania: Oh, I'm leaving for a week's vacation today. Sorry to miss ...
  • That Guy: "Heard" is an overstatement, at least based on the one perfo...
  • grimoaldo: I noticed a couple of comments expressing surprise that toni...
  • kashania: Does that mean that Fleming will be semi-fake-acting?
  • grimoaldo: Siegfried will be Jay Hunter Morris who replaced the replace...
  • Matthew: I'm just enjoying imagining the parallel universe where "hon...
  • Camille: "FIFTY DOLLARS?!?!?!!!!" - for an opera ticket. What an out...
  • Camille: The great Giorgio Tozzi, a paragon of virtues, siinging my h...

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Warhorses and Lullabies

damrau_levineDiana Damrau joined James Levine and the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Sunday afternoon for one of Levine’s typically overloaded – er, generous – orchestral feasts. But this deeply involving marathon of German warhorses rewarded those who would submit to its somber, festive intensity. Read more »

“I have had to subdue everything”

medea_thumb“Oh God! Oh justice dear to God!  Oh light of the sun!”

La Divina discusses her cinematic debut.  Read more »

The March of Regie

norma_regie_thumbOur Own Ercole Farnese exercised his sharp eye for detail almost before La Cieca got the most recent Regie quiz posted: within 25 minutes he identified the work in question as Norma. We have video of the controversial Peter Mussbach staging after the jump.   Read more »

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Que personne ne dorme!

UPDATE: Dessay has “just now” confirmed she will go on for tonight’s performance, which begins in about 15 minutes.

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Housekeeping: the art of conversation

La Cieca has heard a few complaints that the “threaded” comments format (you know, “2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.2.1,” etc.) can be difficult to untangle for occasional visitors. While we’re not quite up to unthreading the comments, we do want to keep the cher public happy. So what do you think about the following options for keeping you up to date on the parterre conversation? 

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Brits blow it again

A drag queen friend of La Cieca’s — long before she was La Cieca — used to have an expression she to describe the terminally inept. The queen would say, “That guy could screw up a blowjob.” By which she meant, of course, receiving a blowjob, i.e., just sitting there, or standing there or whatever.

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Peak performance

On this upcoming otherwise dreary Tuesday afternoon, La Cieca hopes the cher public will all be figuratively glued to their PCs and Macs for a live web telecast of Werther from the Opéra-Bastille.

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Featuring that miracle of the age, electric light

In Zurich, the 20th century has apparently never ended. Opening on Thursday, a “revival” of Nabucco conducted by Nello Santi, directed by Jonathan Miller, and starring Maria Guleghina (Abigaille), Juan Pons (Nabucco) and Carlo Colombara (Zaccaria). Unfortunately, budget constraints prevent us from hearing the Fenena of Agnes Baltsa…

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