June 2011
“Time and tide wait for no one” pontificates Myrtle the barmaid, setting the tone for André Previn’s opera about fleeting romance but enduring love: Brief Encounter. Loosely based on the play Still Life by Noël Coward and the screenplay for the film Brief Encounter by Coward and David Lean, this opera (now on CD) tells…
One of the many pleasures of reviewing CDs and DVDs is the discovery of an unfamiliar composer whose works are original, fascinating, and moving. Such is the case with Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, and his new Nonesuch CD of the concert piece “Gra agus Bas” (Love and Death) and a 6-song cycle entitled “That the Night…
What’s the diminuitive of “Normina?” Well, you’d better start coining the word, because Cecilia Bartoli is recording Bellini’s Norma, with John Osborn, Sumi Jo and Michele Pertusi; leading the Orchestra La Scintilla will be, well, Bartoli mostly, but nominally in charge will be Giovanni Antonini.
On this first summery weekend, La Cieca hopes you will all enjoy the balmy weather; but, if you must, there’s chat, and quite a lot to chat about there is too!
When George Steel predicted that the New York City Opera’s budget for 2011-12 would be “significantly smaller” than the $22 million alloted for 2010-11, he wasn’t kidding. The gulp-inducing details follow the jump.
NYCO’s director of artistic planning Ed Yim is leaving the company to to serve as a consultant at the New York Philharmonic. [NYT]
An “unbelievably honest narrative of a woman caught in a dangerous cycle of addiction and illness who overcame her demons in an utterly triumphant way” — that’s what publisher Harper Collins is calling the forthcoming memoir by Deborah Voigt, tentatively titled “True Confessions of a Down to Earth Diva.” The tome is scheduled for publication…
Five decades before the Met turned to computer-assisted planks to help tell the story of Wagner’s Ring cycle, the company stirred controversy and comment with another staging of the tetralogy. General Manager Rudolf Bing imported a stark, abstract production from the Salzburg Festival in order to secure the services of Herbert von Karajan, who not…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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