Council chamber
La Cieca welcomes cher plebians and cher patricians alike to a chat during this afternoon’s Met broadcast of Simon Boccanegra. The performance begins at 1:00 PM.
Intermission features today include the Toll Brothers Metropolitan Opera Quiz with moderator Teddy Tahu Rhodes testing Michelle Krisel, Neal Goren and Michael Capasso. Backstage, Renée Fleming (”La Dappertutta”) interviews Adrianne Pieczonka, Marcello Giordani, Placido Domingo and James Morris.
The real-time chat is, as usual, over at La Casa della Cieca.
with some exceptions, no one is ever going to be able to stop the audience from clapping at the end of Nessun dorma
Well, you could hire Richard Margison.
Thank you CF
; actually, 8 degrees sound much more attractive than -15 and dropping. Unfortunately, I have to work for living, which, for the moment, means some 300 students to examine in the week to come -:(. But, as a fan of Baroque, you should try the Easter Festival Misteria Paschalia in Krakow, someday; this year, there will be Jaroussky, Vivica Genaux, Johannes Passion with Minkowski, and some other Baroque stars 
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Note taken, Liana. Johannes Passion is a problem though, makes me feel more Jewish than I want to admit
Sang it under Hermann Max in Jerusalem and it certainly went deeper than ever! Of course I’ve heard about the festival, everybody who is anybody seems to be singing there…
Liana, I have happy memories of concertgoing in Poland. I saw a magnificent Verdi Requiem in Krakow when on holiday there in 2008- I particularly remember the soprano, Barbara Kubiak, who was wonderful (and who of course bears a significant surname).
Nice to hear it armer
. CF, I think there is something in Johannes Passion having this kind of impact on people, because me, it makes me feel much more catholic than I would like to admit…
There’s a whiff of propaganda about the Johannes, which I don’t sense in the Matthaeus. Of course I love the opening and closing choruses and Es ist vollbracht. But the turbas are very disturbing (musically and therefore emotionally) whereas The Matthaus is much more concerned with aesthetics. But I’ll take the High Mass any day over those two. Even singing it for six consecutive days (and having to do office-work in between) hasn’t quenched my appetite for this masterpiece, one of a kind and my all-time No. 1.
I prefer Matthaus Passion to Johannes, but overall, I must humbly admit that Baroque is not what I like most. Somehow, after a while, it always seems too monotonous; perhaps it would change if I had time to get to know it more thouroughly, but I don’t. And, since I mostly listen while working, that is, reading or writing, (and my job doesn’t have anything to do with music), I usually need something more dramatic to keep me awake
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Suits me, as long as Olive sings the title role!
What a party DVD that would be.
I was going to do a La traviata duet with a
certain rather bizarre San Francisco woman
music critic, but unfortunately she passed away
(just in time). You see how these things go.
Olive, I hope your high-D is in great shape;
if not Pla. will sing it for you!
Your concepts of fees at the Met are highly inaccurate. Met top fees are some of the lowest in the world.
The Met doesn’t pay nearly enough for it to be interesting to Domingo. He made his money a long, long time ago. The fee for him is nothing.
This has to do with building an unsurpassable record of roles and debuts at the Met so he will never be forgotten.
Money doesn’t even enter into it.
Not to worry about Gheorghiu since she probably would cancel anyway.