Of all places, NY1’s “Inside City Hall” is the setting for an opera roundtable tonight when John Adams, Peter Sellars, James Maddalena, and Peter Gelb appear on the program to discuss the impending premiere of Nixon in China at the Met. “Inside City Hall” airs at 7 p.m. tonight with a special edition after the State of the Union.
“Rolando Villazon brought in renowned mime and clown Nola Rae to help out with his directorial debut, Werther, which opened tonight in Lyon.” [Nouvel Observateur via Intermezzo]
Has this distinguished artist’s career reached its twilight? Anyone with an eye in his head can see it’s time to pass the torch and forge ahead with the immortal work.
In the summer of 2007, at the height of the heated speculation and public debates over who would succeed Wolfgang Wagner as the head of the Bayreuth Festival, his daughter, Katharina Wagner presented a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the festival, replacing the mind-numbingly boring one by her father (his third at Bayreuth). It’s hard not to see this production as an audition for the job of General Manager; in fact, Katharina and her half sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier were named as co-managers of the festival the following year.
“It was during a prolonged losing streak of the New York Yankees,” writes composer Richard Wilson, “that, musing on the subject of failure, I decided to write an opera about Aethelred the Unready.” And so he did, writing both libretto and music to a one-act opera in seven scenes.
La Cieca (center, in chair) has listened carefully to the Bühnenweihfestspielkrieg commentary of the cher public (also pictured) and, though practically overwhelmed by the brilliance of all of you, really, has managed to settle on a single winner, who, in addition to the hand of Eva Pogner, will receive the complete DVD set of Der Ring des Nibelungen.
La Cieca applauds cosmodimontevergine for so elegant a solution to the previous Regie quiz. As hinted by the YouTube clip, the piece is indeed Kalman’s Die Csárdásfürstin, as performed at Oper Köln in a production by Bernd Mottl. A clip from this unusual take on the classic operetta, plus our next Regie quiz, after the jump.
La Cieca has (all together now) a hunch that the cher public would enjoy discussing this afternoon’s performance of Rigoletto during the Met broadcast beginning at 1:00 pm. Details after the jump.
Cher Public