November 2010
Seven decades of difference in age doesn’t stand in the way of a charming interview between Marta Eggerth and Zachary Woolfe on the occasion of her viewing her 1932 film Das Blaue vom Himmel for the very first time. (Prepare to be verklempt.) [New York Observer]
La Cieca was bcc:ed on this response from a member of the cher public to a request from the New York City Opera. With the permisssion of the author, she is publishing the note here for your discussion.
I saw the final dress rehearsal of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera House on Monday this week, and I think I have never seen the place so crowded for such an event. No wonder, for here was a cast you might dream of, in a highly finished piece of work mounted by one of…
Say what you like about the cher public, but they certainly know their Prokofiev! Within half an hour of La Cieca’s posting the most recent Regie quiz, two of you identified the production as The Love of Three Oranges. The staging, by the way, is from the Stadttheater Bern, and the director was Marc Adam.…
Which cord does one snip to make a castrato? So goes a running joke in The Last Castrato by Guy Fredrick Glass, a play about Alessandro Moreschi, the last living castrato and the only one ever recorded. Much of his career was spent as the first soprano of the Sistine Chapel Choir, both because of…
I attend the opera intent on enjoying myself. If the music is not my favorite, there is always something to like, be it a colleague’s individual performance, the discovery of a newcomer, nifty stagecraft or costumes, observing the movement skills of the various singers, or in worst-case scenarios, observing the audience’s boredom, carefully notating the…
Inspired by Our Own Camille (not pictured, obviously), La Cieca proposes a new competition in honor of the Met’s coming revival of La fanciulla del West. Your challenge: share with us the most suggestive double-entendre line in a published synopsis or review of Puccini’s opera.
La Cieca is pleased to announce that off-Broadway sensation (and parterre advertiser) The Last Castrato is offering a 50% discount on tickets to the cher public. Parterrians can enjoy this play with music suggested by the life and career of Alessandro Moreschi for only $9.00—less than the new Harry Potter! Simply use the code word “Parterre,”…
Trash television gets the “royal” treatment. [Danny Knows Best]
Our Own Ercole Farnese discovered and translated this interview in La Stampa with Jonas Kaufmann, in which the tenor discusses his “his idolatrous success with ladies and gay men, four fifths of the opera-goers.”
Which director is driving his Met cast crazy with his perfectionism? As if the rush to opening night is not enough, he’s insisting that every time a scene is rehearsed the blocking must be identical “for the HD broadcast.”
The annual Richard Tucker gala came and went at Avery Fisher Hall with the usual quota of gaffes, wardrobe malfunctions, no-shows, too-much-shows, substitutions and surprise guests (well, guest). And sandwiched between the routine, the egocentric and the just plain dull were moments of true dementia, the moments that we melomanes live and die for. Most…
Guess who stole the show last night at the Richard Tucker gala? [ABC News]
Truth is more brutal than fiction. Particularly when the truth is the story of Colonel Floyd James Thompson, whose nine years in captivity in Vietnam made him America’s longest-held prisoner of war. It’s perfect material for a chamber opera: an epic war story focused on the intimacy of a single excruciating life. It seems to…
The Austrian dramatic soprano was born November 14, 1926.
In the words of La Cieca’s old, old, old friend Mrs. Malaprop, “We will not anticipate the past, our retrospection will now be all to the future.” And that’s where our chat will be as well, if dear Betsy has anything to do with it.
I used to think that recital albums, greatest hits albums, and concert albums were just products of a singer’s vanity—or conductor—and that they terribly lacked imagination or preparation or dramatic heft. “Greatest Hits” albums frequently suffer from this affliction, as it is, more often than not, just a mish-mash of what this soprano or that…
Our Own JJ delves into the mysteries of time travel—as it relates to opera production, of course. [Musical America]
“Great at push-ups and pull-ups? Do you put your friends to shame at the gym? Come show us what you’ve got! San Francisco Opera announces a public casting call seeking athletic men with specific skills to appear in an upcoming Company production in Fall 2011.” [San Francisco Opera]
No, the above image is not from Sunday’s upcoming First Ever East Coast Parterre Meet and Greet, but rather dear Mr. Hogarth’s take on “The Rake’s Progress.” A more modern treatment of theme of the dissolute punished (the Stravinsky opera, La Cieca means) will be yours to enjoy via the magic of webcasting tomorrow night…
Don Pasquale is one of those operas that make listeners feel very happy and gay, who, after seeing it, live happily ever after and gayer than before. It’s about a whore who needs to get laid, with an eye on the young (once and still bottom) hunk versus the older (once top, yes you guessed…
“What do you call a sex comedy that’s neither funny nor sexy? At the Met on Tuesday night, you’d have called it Cosi Fan Tutte.” [New York Post]
La Cieca has managed to nab a few moments of video of tonight’s performance of Vec Makropulos from San Francisco, proving that Karita Mattila is indeed today’s ideal interpreter of the role of Emilia Marty. [Video]
“Carmen, a passionate, headstrong gypsy and one of the best-known characters in opera, is famously enigmatic, but Ms. Garanca takes that quality almost to the point of anonymity. It can often seem not that she’s a bad actress but that she’s not quite sure what acting is.” Zealous Zachary Woolfe mulls The Garanca Paradox.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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