You know La Cieca is the last person in the universe to repeat gossip, so listen carefully the first time. There was a bit of a foofaraw over on Facebook yesterday involving two of your doyenne’s favorite people, in alphabetical order Christine Goerke and Norman Lebrecht, and I think the graphic above may be a teeny spoiler as to how it turned out. Details after the jump, cher public. 

Oh,  yes, this requires some setup. There’s this tenor named Allan Clayton who’s appearing as Tamino in the English National Opera’s production of The Magic Flute, and as if the poor fellow hadn’t already suffered enough, critic Barry Millingon assessed Mr. Clayton’s performance thusly: “…vocally in excellent trim but needs to spend more time at the gym if he is to be stripped regularly to his boxers.”

Mr. Millington hardly had time to think, “Did I say that out loud?” before Mr. Clayton tweeted back

Those of you who have not recently crawled out from under a cabbage leaf can, I think, guess where this is going, because it has all the makings of a Facebook Tempest in a Teapot®.

Here’s just one snippet of the aforementioned Tempest:

Leaving aside the obvious conclusion that Lebrecht probably insulted Goerke purely by accident since, as a registered computer moron, he must have thought he was replying to Brett Polegato‘s comment and hit the wrong “Reply” button, one is left with nothing but admiration for La Goerke’s Dowager Countess-worthy comeback: civil but murderous.

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