November 2010

Class reunion (for the first time)

Reminder, all: the First Ever East Coast Parterre Meet and Greet is coming soon: Sunday November 14, to be exact. Here’s a reminder of the complete details, and, as an added enticement, there’s some video (apparently sent back from the future; I don’t pretend to understand the technology) of La Cieca’s participation in the festivities—after…

Non son più Regie, son dio!

The dark and dreary imagery from last week’s Regie quiz stumped more than a few of the cher public, until finally Manou made a hestitant guess: “Kat’a Kabanova?”—which was in, fact, correct. (The production is by Andrea Breth for La Monnaie.) La Cieca trusts this week’s photos will lead to a similarly entertaining range of…

Cosi corner

On behalf of (left to right) Miah Persson, Pavol Breslik, Isabel Leonard and Nathan Gunn, your doyenne invites the cher public to gather at La Cieca’s Dream House for a chat during the prima of the Met’s Così fan tutte this evening beginning at 8:00 pm. Details after the jump.

Kiss me, skate

“Following up on its brassy season opener, Bernstein’s A Quiet Place, New York City Opera is charming audiences with Intermezzo, a comedy inspired by a real-life episode in the life of the opera’s composer, Richard Strauss.”  [New York Post]

Tosca divina

This review was not going to be primarily about Shirley Verrett. She is not a singer I am all that familiar with and when I was sent this DVD of Tosca to review a week ago, I focused more on the director of the production, baritone-turned-producer Tito Gobbi, than on the singers. But sometimes life…

Blonde item

According to Our Own JJ, there was skating on the ramparts of Seville last Thursday night. [New York Post]

Remembering Shirley Verrett

When handing out the goodies, the gods weren’t stingy with Shirley Verrett.  Few opera singers were as prodigiously gifted as Verrett:  the perfect amalgam of Kunst and Stimm housed in a frame of voluptuous allure.  In addition to an instrument of stunning natural beauty and easy range, Verrett displayed superior musicianship, dramatic intelligence and searing…

Happy Birthday Dame Gwyneth Jones

The spectacular dramatic soprano was born 74 years ago today in Pontnewynydd, Wales. She is seen below in one of her less familiar (though no less effective) roles, Hanna in Die Lustige Witwe.

The sweet smell of success

[@zwoolfe]

That’s gotta hurt

“…Don José stabs Carmen in the gripping finale.” [NYT]

The Lady In The Tutti Frutti Chat

Betsy (pictured) writes: Some people say I dress too gay, But ev’ry day, I feel so gay; And when I’m gay, I dress that way, Is something wrong with that?

Shirley Verrett 1931-2010

La Cieca has just heard that magnificent American mezzo-soprano and, later, soprano Shirley Verrett died earlier today. She was 79.  

Turn your eyes away

Which would-be hunk has taken to stripping off his shirt in mid-rehearsal? He eventually covers his tawny torso with a t-shirt, but meanwhile he basks like an infant in his Met colleagues’ gaze.

A hole in the head

This just in from the Met press office: “William Shimell will sing the role of Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte for all performances this season, replacing Wolfgang Holzmair who is suffering from a sinus infection.”  Mr. Holzmair’s sinus infection is apparently scheduled to linger through December 2.

Saying a mouthful

“A few critics hosannaed ‘Thanks be to Great God Lenny for smooching us once more with his plump, moist genius,’ but the majority echoed Cecil B. DeMille’s tactful reaction to Norma Desmond’s bizarre comeback screenplay, “There are some good things in it…’”  Our Own JJ reflects on Christopher Alden‘s direction of A Quiet Place at…

La chat que tu m’avais jetée

Attention gamins, cigarières, picadors, and other drôles de gens: the time approaches for our weekly evening live chat. And this time La Cieca remembered! The opera is Carmen, the start time is 8:00 pm, and le programme avec les détails follows the jump.

There ought to be a new word for camp

“Tyler Perry‘s… For Colored Girls does feel like a ghoulish joke, a dated horror show bordering on parody. It’s both operatic and tone deaf, with explosions of hysteria that include a drunken Macy Gray performing a back-alley abortion and the conversion of a poem spoken by [Ntozake] Shange‘s Lady in Purple into an actual opera…

Happy Birthday Vincenzo Bellini

Were the Swan of Catania as immortal as his melodies, he would be would be 209 years old today! Admirers of the “King of Cantilena” are invited to follow La Cieca’s example and post YouTube clips of favorite Bellini morceaux. 

Edgar Allan Nouveau

A painter’s nightmares of death start to become real. A man’s lover dies of a flesh-eating plague and inhabits the body of a new young fling. A TV news anchor finds herself on the other side of the headlines, drowning in the Holland Tunnel. If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, these are the operas…

Finishing the spat

Although billed as “I Love Lucy the opera”, New York City Opera’s production of Richard Strauss’s conversation-piece Intermezzo offers far more emotional depth than the much-loved 1950s sitcom. Yet ironically, in key moments it lacks the necessary heart which Lucy had in spades. 

Frank O’Hara, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see…

“I did it for me!”

With all due respect to Opinionated Neophyte‘s succinct but horrific suggestion, La Cieca has decided that the palm for post-publicist harebrainery should go to SF Guy‘s fully realized scenario of media synergy, with its characteristic whiff of “why not me” acting out. Congratulations, SF Guy!

Is it bigger than a Regie?

For the first time in ages, a Regie production has managed to stump the panel! La Cieca will turn over all the cards and reveal to you that last week’s Regie quiz represented Haydn’s L’isola disabitata. You should have been able to figure that one out because the photographs depicted no desert island and lots…

Up on the housetop, click, click, click!

Just in time for the holidays, Juan Diego Flórez releases the de rigueur Christmas album every internationally renowned opera star seems to make.  Entitled Santo, this CD, like most others of its ilk, is pleasantly entertaining.  However, Flórez eschews a straight Christmas album for one composed of a mix of religious standards, carols and eclectic…