As La Cieca (pictured, alas) whoops it up somewhere in the vicinity of Lincoln Center tonight, she hopes that you, the cher public, will at least kick off your festivities with a chat during tonight’s Met prima of La traviata, beginning at 7:00 pm.
Details after the jump. Read more »
So stop me if you’ve heard this one: a, shall we say, mature diva gets stranded in the snow, and in her place a substitute (carefully hidden, no doubt!) gives a performance! Out of nowhere – gives a performance! Well, according to Intermezzo, life imitated art (and what better art to imitate than All About Eve?) earlier today, December 30, when a certain, shall we say, less mature diva jumped in for Manhattan-stranded Renée Fleming at the Staatskapelle Dresden’s annual concert on the German TV’s ZDF channel. [Intermezzo]
La Cieca’s spy wriggled into last night’s Met dress rehearsal of La traviata and reports:
“One has to be careful about making too many judgments or drawing too many conclusions from a rehearsal, but last night’s final dress was indeed very promising.” Read more »
First-time novelist Matthew Gallaway’s ardent love for Tristan and Isolde gushes through every page of The Metropolis Case. According to Gallaway, Tristan is the highest expression of human art, and the book functions effectively as the ultimate initiator in the cult of Wagner. The novel opens with a lengthy discussion of the opera in the format of an email from an opera lover to a less-enlightened friend, and characters are forever discussing the opera, saying things like “You don’t ‘check out’ Tristan. You become it.”
The bestowal of a bouquet of accolades upon James Levine is unsurprisingly the main thrust of the current Opera News (why, after all, should this month be different from any other in the rag’s 75 year history?) and given the plum of penning this poetical posy is the horticulturally apt writer Scott Rose, “author of the novel Death in Hawaii.” In this encomium—for which the adjective “fulsome” is altogether too mild a description— Mr. Rose winnows down what was what La Cieca supposes was in the most literal sense a list of “countless memorable moments” to a mere 40 of [...]
No programs for last night’s Fanciulla, just someone had worked overtime on the copier to give us a cast list and plot summary. If no delivery for the glossy, fully 3k people there, just slight slip and slide on the Plaza enough to keep me gripping the alpenstock. (A weapon of Individual Destruction, permitted by the Met, if not airlines outside of Chehnya.)
As we look forward to New Year’s Eve and to the gala opening of Willy Decker’s La Traviata at the Met, it seems fitting to look back—by way of the official, live, DVD recording of the production’s sensational world premiere at the Salzburg Festival in 2005—to get some sense of what’s behind all the hype. Released in 2005 by Deutsche Grammophon, this recording promises an exciting evening for the Met’s audience on December 31st, but also raises the question of whether the New York premiere will live up to the high expectations set in Salzburg.
If you’re like La Cieca, you’re snowed in today, so how about let’s pass the time recalling great operatic snow moments?
Cher Public