September 2010
When Hans Von Bülow joked that Rienzi was Meyerbeer’s best opera, he was not very far off the mark. In fact, Rienzi, der Letze der Tribunen, Wagner’s third opera, has all the traits of a typical “grand opéra”: it is divided in five acts, features a historical character or situation, makes large use of the…
At the request of a member of the cher public, La Cieca has updated the Little Shop of Arias store here at parterre. Available for preorder from amazon.com are such goodies as a new DVD of I puritani starring Nino Machaidze and Juan Diego Flórez.
American soprano Ailyn Perez made her Royal Opera debut last night on the company’s tour in Japan, singing two-thirds of the role of Violetta when the scheduled soprano, Ermonela Jaho, canceled after a rocky first act. (Jaho herself was a late substitute for the ever more elusive Angela Gheorghiu.) A witness to the performance says,…
After years (or was it months) wandering der Irrnis und der Leiden Pfade, La Cieca has returned to the broadcast booth for another episode of Unnatural Acts of Opera.
Readers of parterre.com are, La Cieca calculates, about six weeks ahead of the curve, so your doyenne figures you are ready to hear what will likely be a major scoop in the New York Times a few days prior to Halloween. It’s about the technical rehearsals for the Met’s season opener Das Rheingold, and what is…
Betsy’s recovered (if you can call it that) from last weekend’s marathon, and apparently game for more. If you’re feeling likewise, the meeting is at the usual location.
UPDATE: The Royal Opera has apologized to Intermezzo!
La Cieca was delighted, amused and infuriated (three of her favorite emotions) when she read yet another wonderful piece over at The Awl yesterday, a statistical analysis determining The Greatest Diva of the Past 25 Years. This treatise, by one Jay Caspian Kang, was limited in scope to ladies inhabiting the realm of popular music,…
When Peter Gelb really wants an artist at the Met, he pulls out all the stops. La Cieca hears that Bryn Terfel, on his way back to New York after a brief visit with his family back in Wales, arrived at the airport in the UK this morning only to discover he left his passport…
La Cieca wishes she could write a caption so deadpan.
“As beautiful as her singing was, [Renata Scotto] never was much of an actress.” — Lotfi Mansouri: An Operatic Journey
Les Troyens is one of those things, or often two of those things, that should be a big event or it practically needn’t happen at all.* The keynote is grandiosity in the best way, from the subject to the musical demands (let’s include the implicit challenge of one singer performing both Cassandre and Didon—not because…
Sunday challenge: can you name the two obvious errors (of omission) in human physiology within the first 90 seconds of this scene from Rigoletto?
“It is in the Wagner repertory that Ms. Brewer has truly frustrated her fans. She has sung Isolde magnificently, though so far only in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s ‘Tristan Project,’ which used Bill Viola’s videos, while Ms. Brewer and the other lead singers performed as in a concert, with music stands and vocal scores.” [NYT]
Friendly correspondent Kalena (not pictured) reports that (so far as she can make out) the telecast of the Mantua Rigoletto this weekend will in fact be viewable here in the US. Her email and La Cieca’s attempt to figure out time zones after the jump.
Finally, the background to the story that rocked the operatic world earlier this summer. Peter Stein withdrew from the Met’s Boris Godunov “because he felt offended by his treatment at the United States Consulate in Berlin when he applied for a work visa and by a lack of sympathy from Peter Gelb, the Met’s general…
Real estate news from San Francisco: the Potrero Hill home of the late Blanche Thebom, which “includes a very spacious living room that opens onto a large view deck,” is now for sale. [SocketSite]
In a development likely to elicit from aficionados of the tenor voice a resounding “meh,” Dimitri Pittas has withdrawn from all scheduled performances of Verdi’s Macbeth at Lyric Opera of Chicago, to be replaced by Italo-Nutleyite sensation Leonardo Capalbo (pictured).
John Corigliano‘s first and second symphonies won the Grawemeyer and the Pulitzer, respectively; the premiere of his Third Symphony wasn’t even reviewed by the Times. His score for The Red Violin won an Oscar™; his score for Edge of Darkness ended up on the cutting room floor. Is there an American composer at once more…
During rehearsals for the upcoming Rigoletto from Mantova, Zubin Mehta attacks Sandro Bondi, Berlusconi’s Minister of Culture. Mehta is angry, and by his own admission, he becomes “cattivo”, nasty, when speaking about the financial cuts of the Berlusconi government in the opera houses.
La Cieca’s spy tells her that Maestro Levine returned to the Met today for a coaching session with the cast of Das Rheingold.
“I just saw a woman upstairs,” said poet/translator Richard Howard, “wearing a very large pair of sunglasses that made her look for all the world like a great dragonfly.” “Upstairs” was the balcony at the Met; at the time, I was taking Howard’s lecture on the subject of frivolity in literature, and so when I…
La Cieca is proud to unveil what she hopes will become your second-favorite calendar: The New York Opera Calendar at Parterre. This handy resource includes an exhaustive list of opera and opera-related performances for the 2010-2011 season, the better to plan your busy social life. Opera companies and members of the cher public who have…
Igor Stravinsky was a bit of a musical shapeshifter in his day, especially when compared to his contemporaries in early 20th century Europe. Given, the time in which Stravinsky was living in Europe was one of the most dynamic periods in recent history, but few were able to consistently generate music of such varying style…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.