Here’s your discussion thread for this morning/afternoon’s webcast of Lohengrin from Bayreuth, cher public. La Cieca herself is grabbing a bite of lunch and will join you later!
“It’s difficult to push a boulder up a hill, recognizing that we’ll never get there,” says George Steel, adding, “If I have to take tomatoes from here to there, I can live with that.” For a translation of that poetic flight of fancy, La Cieca has resorted to Josephine Baker, after the jump. Read more »
La Cieca (not pictured) dons her “early adopter” hat once again as she prepares to watch the live telecast of Lohengrin from the Bayreuth Festival on Sunday. It’s an online pay-per-view event (a ticket is €14.90), though the presenters promise it can alternatively be watched “on demand at a time of your own choice between the 15th and 30th of August 2011.” Read more »
This just landed in La Cieca’s inbox: “We regret to inform you that Lyric Opera of Chicago season is in peril. Yesterday Lyric advised us that if we do not accept their one year demand for a two week reduction of employment, an elimination of wage parity with the orchestra, and an additional 5.2 % reduction in salaries that they will lock out AGMA members on Monday, August 22, 2011.”
Those of you who feel like an idiot for missing the previous blind item (about how the Met has managed to wriggle out of a contract and say “good day!” to a disastrous co-production) should now spring to attention and clear your minds for a clue about the identity of the director scheduled for his Met debut. Your hint: the gentleman in question is not pictured above, but, in another sense, he is.
Musical theater doyen Stephen Sondheim is not amused by plans to “revamp” (or, La Cieca might venture to pun, “devamp”) Porgy and Bess, thus “to transform the classic 1935 opera into a commercial Broadway musical.” La Cieca thinks this controversy will make for a very interesting sidebar in the ongoing Regie debate.
La Cieca hears that parterre fave David Daniels will get all eponymous and stuff for a world premiere opera entitled Oscar, based on the life of Oscar Wilde, for Santa Fe Opera in 2013, with Opera Company of Philadelphia to follow. The work is to boast music by Theodore Morrison and a libretto and stage direction by John Cox.
Cher Public