Headshot of La Cieca

Cher Public

  • grimoaldo: “I remember Levine sending a message through Max Epstein to linger more on O sag’, Vater! Sieh... 8:07 PM
  • luvtennis: Kashie: Also, when I refer Wagner, I am referring both to his own artistic output, but also his... 8:07 PM
  • Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler: I agree with Will, I didn’t find the McVicar vapid at all. I... 7:55 PM
  • luvtennis: Thank you! See I am not always overly suspicious of others motives… :-) 7:53 PM
  • luvtennis: Thank you, dear Camille. As always, you are very kind. 7:52 PM
  • luvtennis: Environment + audience. Surely, it can be successfully argued that western art music no longer occupies... 7:51 PM
  • manou: Maybe a kind friend played Baudelaire the Liszt piano transcriptions of Wagner’s operas. 7:39 PM
  • oedipe: By ensembles I meant vocal -rather than instrumental- ensembles. In the meantime, I found an interview he... 7:34 PM

How monarchic was my sprezzatura!

“Yet the evening’s first words, heard in the set-piece Ombra ma fui—like all of Xerxes’ arias sung with monarchic sprezzatura and amoral relish by Stella Doufexis—came unexpectedly in Italian. It was flagrant violation of this house’s fundamental principle, here brushed aside by the cultural capital of the aria and deemed insufficient to sunder the inextricable bonds between the Italian text and Handel’s melody. It was as if the composer and his music, through his advocate Herheim, was holding ground at least at the outset against appropriation of his music by the moderns.”

Oh, what’s not to like in a review like this one?

18 comments