“Opera star Renee Fleming came to Manhattan’s Grand Ballroom to record her vocals for Steven Spielberg’s new animated feature Tintin. Singing live with a 69 piece orchestra, Ms. Fleming was also filmed for motion caption. To ensure her animated character reflected all of her natural facial expressions they place green markers on Ms. Fleming’s face.” [Manhattan Center] (Note: this photo has been removed by request of the copyright owner.)
Not everything a genius creates is … a work of genius. Y’know? Mozart, for example: Sure, he was a prodigy at four, and at ten, and even at fourteen, but did he actually compose anything spectacular before he turned, say, seventeen? I’m thinking of “Exultate, Jubilate,” if you want to know. Read more »
Now Anthony Tommasini has gone rummaging for the good news (“a place that could set the cultural tone for its neighborhood, much the way the Public Theater defines the life of its East Village environs”) so completely obscured by the dark clouds of recent reports from NYCO. But even a cockeyed optimist like Tommasini has his doubts.
“Eva, Anna Gabler, is pretty as a picture; all the more disappointing, then, that she has neither Amanda Roocroft‘s naturalness of movement in the WNO production… nor Felicity Lott‘s former long-breathed radiance.” [The Arts Desk]
UPDATE: A full story of NYCO’s woes, including distressing quotes from George Steel is now online at the New York Times.
And now Anthony Tommasini has joined the chorus calling for James Levine “to make his next contribution to the company he loves and step aside as music director.” Even the headline of his NYT piece echoes the talk on parterre a fortnight ago.
At long last (or, anyway, a whole year later) La Cieca (pictured) is delighted to announce the event of events here at parterre.com, the 2010-2011 Parterre Cher Public Choice Awards. You, the aforementioned cher public, now have your chance to vote on the best, the worst and the most divalicious events of the season, as nominated by La Cieca’s hand-picked Blue Ribbon panel of experts. Watch for the results of this poll at the end of next week, when the coveted “Pubies” will be awarded.
“The critical reaction to the Robert Lepage’s new production of Die Walküre at the Met leaves this contrarian reviewer in something of a quandary. Not only was pretty much everybody underwhelmed, but there was a consensus about what (they thought) was wrong: the clunkiness of The Machine, the lack of poetry in the latter part of the first act, the clumsy path to the final tableau. No one doesn’t want to just heap on the contempt, but at the same time it’s not easy to build a case for Lepage’s invention thus far in the Ring.”
Cher Public