Headshot of La Cieca

Cher Public

  • pasavant: Let’s put lamp shades on our heads and start a Koanga Line! 6:38 PM
  • mia apulia: I am surprised at how moving this is, all the more sad… 6:25 PM
  • La Valkyrietta: Helen starts at 1.40. httpv://www.youtub e.com/watch?v=K-oU i7YzZ-Y 5:40 PM
  • La Valkyrietta: youtube is being difficult httpv://www.youtub e.com/watch?v=-tZO uRRgde4 5:31 PM
  • La Valkyrietta: A light interlude with one of the most fabulous Brünhildes that ever graced an opera stage. Helen... 5:29 PM
  • La Valkyrietta: kashania, I just listened to the Walküre of the eve of Pearl Harbor, the Varnay debut. Bad things... 5:18 PM
  • m. croche: For the record, the Lortzing Wildschuetz from the Wiener Volksoper was a good deal of fun from start to... 4:24 PM
  • RosinaLeckermaul: Our local station is playing the Chicago WERTHER with Polenzani and Koch. Very good performance.... 3:30 PM

We were dead, you know

The setting: a dark plaza extending directly in front of a storied opera house. The time: just after a ho-hum revival of something Puccini. The crowd streams out, moderately satisfied but also far from bowled over. A group open to a proposition, you could say.   Read more »

Gettin’ Ligeti Wit It

macabreWhen invited to participate in a discourse on artistic standards (hello, internet!), it’s easy — pleasurable, even — for an aesthete to bray about “the fall.” Where are the true heldentenors? Your kingdom for a Callas! (Or a Stratas, or a Rysanek!) And might the public, at long last, deserve a stable of directors who possess the good sense to avoid both the trope-y familiar as well as the ill-advised pathways of, ugh, the modern? Read more »