L’Âge d’Or
A friend of the box just reminded La Cieca that tonight, April 22, 2012 is the 40th anniversary of the farewell gala honoring Sir Rudolf Bing for his two-decade tenure as General Manager of the Met. A few highlights from that gala, following the jump.
Didn’t Charles Ludlam do a take off on Callas too ? I seem to remember it was called “Galas.” How appropriate for this thread !
And mother Sylvestri’s comment about Nilsson creating so much emotion without moving at all goes to the core of the opera-going experience : when the music is gloriously sung, it can be on an empty stage, as Wieland Wagner so clearly showed 60 years ago. The “opera as theater” crowd please take note !!
Wieland Wagner’s “empty stage” was the quintessence of opera as theater. Try again.
Angelo, Ludlam did a *Galas*, but I never saw it. I might have been living in Santa Fe at that time. I was upset to miss that play.
Galas review:
http://theater.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9A00E6D71038F935A2575AC0A965948260
Clitissssima adorata of course MMII saw Galas, it was simply DIVINE (no pun intended). One of my greatest regrets is that I never saw “When Queens Collide” although the term seems to have been coined for Marshie
In fact I didn’t even remember the full title of the play until Carisssssima Cieca (many years ago) set me straight, as she knew every detail…… That was when I realized that parterre was really my home also!
And Charles Busch another DIVINE being!!!! the Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, and a couple of later ones the names escape me now….. (and he was a huge fan of the Behrens’ Tosca to boot!) Ahhhhh youth in New York, those were the days!