May 2010
Welcome to the Saturday afternoon chat about Alban Berg‘s Lulu, as broadcast from the Met beginning at 1:00 pm.
To be, or not to be? This is the question. But for the producers of opera on DVD, the question is really, to be an opera or to be a film. The producers of the 1991 DVD of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito as produced by Glyndebourne that same year seemed to have been sitting…
Don’t worry: no clips from The Music Lovers to mark the 170th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Instead, after the jump, a treat from the summer of 2009.
Carl Orff’s 1949 opera (or quasi-opera, as some critics have called it) Antigonae has been issued on 2 CDs on the Profil label, in a Munich radio recording from 1958. This recording, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and featuring the German soprano Martha Mödl in the title role, is a most welcome addition to this work’s…
La Cieca presents the first in a series of speculations why seemingly talented and well-respected artists don’t get hired — or rehired — by the Met.
Wearing her own hair (in a Zeffirelli production!) and sounding fabulous: a snippet of Anna Netrebko‘s Micaëla from Vienna on May 3.
Legendary mezzo-soprano Giulietta Simionato died this morning. She was 99. [Corriere della Sera]
La Cieca has it on good authority that the new music director for the Santa Fe Opera will be Frédéric Chaslin (not pictured), who will preside over a 2011 season featuring Faust, La Boheme, Vivaldi’s Griselda, Wozzeck, and (you guessed it) The Last Savage.
The American coloratura soprano was born May 4, 1930.
“I’m not advocating a tonal takeover of opera, I would just like there to be a little more space for opera as entertainment. Brahms made room for Strauss Jr, Wagner for Rossini, and I think there’s enough room for me now, God knows its not too crowded or anything.” [Times Online]
Reviewing a CD of someone you have never heard live is always a dicey proposition. As we all know, a voice sounds very different in a big hall than it does up-close and personal. So if Marc Hervieux is your favorite new tenor, please don’t put me in the “crosshairs” just yet. I freely admit…
UPDATE: Tonight’s performance of Simon Boccanegra at La Scala (featuring Placido Domingo) has been canceled because of a strike called by unions protesting the “decreto Bondi,” a measure to privatize all of Italy’s major opera houses and reduce salaries at these theaters across the board. Our Own Ercole Farnese reviewed yesterday’s news reports about this…
Tonight Lori Phillips will make her Met debut as Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer, replacing Deborah Voigt, who is ill.
With barely a month (!) remaining before La Fleming’s Hope drops, your doyenne has determined that we (meaning you, the cher public) should do our (i.e., your) utmost to mark this turning point in the history of music.
Romanian tenor Stefan Pop, 23, is one of this year’s first-prize winners in the Operalia competition. There’s a glimpse of the budding hunkentenor in action after the jump.
Adapting a novel, especially a well known novel like Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron, can be a herculean task. The two conflicting, almost mutually exclusive, forces at work are the desire to create a great work for the stage, while at the same time remaining true to all the nuanced characterizations and storylines present in…
“Exciting! Indomitable! Alluring! Rigid! Enormous! Pulsing! Penetrating! Riveting! The public shame of being flogged! Aching tenderness!” [NYT]
Color La Cieca impressed! Friendly Fritz guessed correctly that the opera depicted in last week’s Regie quiz was Franz Schreker‘s Die Gezeichneten — as produced at the Teatro Massimo di Palermo by Graham Vick. Following the jump, a glimpse of what that production looked like in action.
Internationally acclaimed dance club pop sensation Renée Fleming returns to her roots (she often sang opera during her college days) for this afternoon’s Met broadcast of Rossini’s Armida.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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