The surprise is “Worst New Production at the Met,” a dubious honor won by David Alden‘s production of Un ballo in maschera. Honestly, La Cieca doesn’t get it, but she hopes that at least some of the 336 of you who votes that way will explain your opinion in the comments section.

Continuing with the rest of the awards in their traditional order:

Best New Production at the Met: Parsifal, with 513 votes, a clear majority of 61% of total votes cast.

Best Revival at the Met: Dialogues des Carmélites

Worst Revival at the Met: Der Ring des Nibelungen

Best Production at NYCO: Powder Her Face

Best Other New York Opera Production: I Lombardi (OONY)

Best Performance in a Diva Role: Joyce DiDonato in Maria Stuarda

Worst Performance in a Diva Role: Deborah Voigt in Der Ring des Nibelungen

Best Performance in a Divo Role: Jonas Kaufmann in Parsifal (over 70% of votes cast)

Worst Performance in a Divo Role: Marcello Giordani in Les Troyens

Best Performance in a Non-Diva Role: Peter Mattei in Parsifal

Most Significant Cancellation: Marcello Giordani in Les Troyens

Einspringer of the Year: Bryan Hymel in Les Troyens (over 75% of votes cast)

Maestro of the Year: Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Debut of the Year: Bryan Hymel in Les Troyens

The suggested listening for this chat will be an on-demand rebroadcast of a series of episodes of “Unnatural Acts of Opera” dedicated to the December 7, 1975 performance of Verdi’s Macbeth from La Scala, featuring the following personnel:

Macbeth – Piero Cappuccilli; Lady Macbeth – Shirley Verrett; Banco – Nicolai Ghiaurov; Macduff – Franco Tagliavini; Malcolm – Nicola Martinucci.Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala. Conductor: Claudio Abbado.

This week’s chat is a little different, cher public. Instead of listening to a live broadcast internet radio, the interested listenr may simply click the “play” button on the player on the La Casa della Cieca page at 1:00 PM EDT and we’ll all be in synch. (If you arrive late, simply ask someone in the chat how far the stream has advanced, and jump to that point in the stream if you like.)

In recent decades such bel canto specialists as Gwyneth Jones (with Jane Henschel as Adalgisa and a young Jonas Kaufmann as Flavio), Anna Tomowa-Sintow (with Denyce Graves as her Adalgisa), Maria Guleghina, and Carol Neblett have tackled the Druid priestess with decidedly mixed results.

However this important recording proves to be much more than a diva vehicle: a flawed yet endlessly fascinating effort to apply historically-informed performance (HIP) practices to this beloved early 19th century opera.

In his essential Diva and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, Philip Gossett provides a musicologically-detailed yet breezily gossip-filled exposé of the shockingly shoddy contemporary performance practices perpetuated on Italian opera from the first half of the 19th century. Battling the inertia embraced by many opera companies, conductors, and singers, some brave artists have begun to scrap away decades of inaccuracies partly ascribed to a dependence on faulty scores.

Based on a new critical edition prepared by Maurizio Biondi and Riccardo Minasi, this new Norma CD should prove an ear-opening revelation to those able to set aside years of familiarity with recordings (both studio and live) of Bellini’s miraculous score usually disfigured by hundreds of tiny snips, tweaks, and transpositions, some of the most familiar attributed to one important interventionist Gossett spends an entire chapter dissecting: Tullio Serafin.

While performances and recordings of 17th and 18th century operas have been tackling the challenge of “authenticity” for years, it’s been far less common in the 19th century repertoire, although there have been numerous interesting attempts before Norma, mostly on recordings.

Jesús López-Cobos’s recording of Lucia di Lammermoor from the mid-1970s with Montserrat Caballé and José Carreras marked an important step in returning to Donizetti’s original conception. Sir Charles Mackerras went even farther on his Lucia recording using The Hanover Band, an original instrument orchestra.

But it was not the first bel canto recording to do so: with Capella Coloniensis (founded in 1954 as the first orchestra to embrace new research into period performance practices), Gabriele Ferro earlier recorded three Rossini operas, La Cenerentola and L’Italiana in Algeri, both with Lucia Valentini-Terrani, and Tancredi with Fiorenza Cossotto (now out-of-print).

Marc Minkowski’s L’Inganno felice is a particularly fizzy Rossini recording done with period forces, but Minkowski and his Les Musiciens du Louvre have also embraced Offenbach, doing witty versions of La Belle Hélène and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, both with Dame Felicity Lott, on stage and on CD.

Minkowski continues his HIP exploration of the 19th century next week with an intriguing double bill at the Opéra Royal at Versailles: Pierre-Louis Dietsch’s 1842 Le Vaisseau fantôme ou Le Maudit des mers (with Sonya Yoncheva), followed by Wagner’s Der Fliegende Höllander (starring Evgeny Nikitin as the Dutchman) which premiered the following year.

A master of Bach, Handel and Rameau, John Eliot Gardiner has also frequently turned his attention to 19th century French music. His conducting of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, which I was lucky enough to hear in Paris ten years ago was a revelation: the ravishing colors and sonorities of the period instruments made the work sound brand-new.

His comique version of Bizet’s Carmen with Anna Caterina Antonacci and Andrew Richards is similarly fascinating. With his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Gardiner has even dipped into 20th century opera in a 2010 production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.

A few baby steps have also been taken in German opera: before Minkowski’s imminent revival, Bruno Weil had recorded Wagner’s Der Fliegende Höllander, along with Weber’s Der Freischütz (out-of-print) both again with Capella Coloniensis, while Sir Simon Rattle first dipped his toe into Wagner’s Ring with a concert performance of Das Rheingold with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Rapturously mentioned by Zachary Woolfe in The New York Times earlier this year, Parsifal with Thomas Hengelbrock and his Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble (the conductor and orchestra with whom Bartoli sang her first Norma in concert in Dortmund in 2010) will be broadcast by several German radio stations later this month. In addition to using period instruments, many of these recordings and performances also took advantage of new, corrected scores.

However, Decca’s is not the first recorded Norma using original instruments. With his stellar orchestra Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi conducted an early version of the new critical edition in Parma in 2001.

Gossett is particularly pithy discussing this production: while applauding many of Biondi’s orchestral felicities, he deplores the reluctance of the singers to similarly rethink their approach to the music—June Anderson and Daniela Barcellona simply performed the same Norma and Adalgisa they would have done with any other conductor or orchestra.

I have never been able to listen to Anderson without wincing, so I was unable to get through much of this performance; however, there is a later broadcast with Biondi conducting another Norma—the unknown (to me) soprano Katia Pellegrino—and it’s an exciting rendition.

The most unusual aspect of Biondi’s performances is his use of a continuo fortepiano throughout—often the composer would sit in the pit “at the cembalo” but there seems to be little evidence that the instrument was necessarily played, particularly in this opera without any secco recitative. It’s interesting to hear the pianoforte during Bellini’s music, but I agree with Gossett that it sounds quite wrong.

Decca’s Norma conductor Giovanni Antonini’s rhythmically vivid direction exploits the skill of his superb orchestra La Scintilla (the period group in residence at the Zurich Opera) to bring out many unexpected colors and contrasts in Bellini’s orchestration. A relative newcomer to bel canto and originally a recorder and traverse flute virtuoso and founder of Il Giardino Armonico, Antonini proves more at home than did his predecessor on Bartoli’s earlier (and less successful) Bellini recording, La Sonnambula.

The mellow traverse flute solo of “Casta diva” is particularly arresting, as are the more pungent gut strings and natural horns, trumpets and trombones. Unfortunately Decca’s libretto lists neither the musicians nor the members of the chorus so it’s impossible to know the size of the forces used.

Sadly, decades of sterling performance both on stage and on recordings by advocates of HIP have done little to prevent embarrassingly out-of-date complaints about scratchy violins or out-of-tune horns that continue to be held by those either trapped in their allegiance to only things familiar or just plain ignorant about this movement of music-making over the past 40 years.

One needs only to hear the fervent overture played with fire and flair by La Scintilla to discover that this intimate, heartfelt Norma may prove a most worthwhile journey in rediscovering an opera one already thought one knew well.

And what a joy to hear the score uncut—it’s remarkable just how many passages are nearly always dropped or changed; the great trio that concludes Act I proves particularly interesting in its much fuller unabridged form. We get both verses of the cabalettas to Pollione’s and Norma’s arias with the repeats strikingly ornamented, as are numerous passages in both Norma-Adalgisa duets.

Despite its completeness, the total timing (on just 2 CDs) is shorter than many “butchered” performances/recordings due to the often surprisingly brisk tempi. The notes in the CD booklet about the critical edition argue that these faster speeds reflect tempo markings in Bellini’s autograph score.

For example, the first Norma-Adalgisa duet pulses with the excitement of two women sharing their experiences of a forbidden seduction rather than meandering with a languorous tempo more suitable to a love duet. A frantically quick “Guerra” chorus is tremendously threatening; its barbarism highlighted by the vibrant singing of the previously unknown chorus, The International Chamber Vocalists.

The most conventional portrayal of the four principals is bass-baritone Michele Pertusi’s Oroveso. He does what he can to enliven a basically uninteresting character, but I find his voice rather light for the Druid leader lacking the gravitas and sonorous low notes one ideally wants.

The Roman consul Pollione has always been the biggest obstacle to my completely capitulating to this opera—his last-minute transformation always strikes me as unbelievable given his heretofore recklessly predatory behavior toward both Norma and Adalgisa. His challenging scena also is uninspired and ungrateful to the tenor.

Decca’s Pollione, American John Osborn (best known for his Rossini roles, including recently Arnold in Guillaume Tell) performs the role created by Domenico Donzelli, the first Torvaldo in Rossini’s Torvaldo e Dorliska and the first Belfiore in Il Viaggio a Reims.

His casting is remarkable since one more usually encounters brawny lesser-known Verdi/Puccini tenors in the role. Despite the occasional more nuanced Franco Corelli or Carlo Bergonzi, one more likely hears instead Robleto Merolla, Francisco Ortiz, Adriaan vam Limpt or Amadeo Zambon.

Osborn’s voice usually strikes me as unattractive and his hectic, pressured first-act scene with particularly screamy high notes in the repeat of the cabaletta only confirmed my previous disdain. However, he eventually does achieve a minor miracle: transforming Pollione into a fascinating character, a compulsive seducer, sure of his allure and not eager to let go of the women he’s conquered. Osborn’s aggressive seduction of Adalgisa is a frightening manipulation, displaying a brutal ego in overdrive. He does try without much success to make his “conversion” in the final moments convincing.

Rather than the usual preference for a an off-duty Azucena or Amneris, casting a soprano as Adalgisa (recalling the role’s creator Giulia Grisi—who later sang the title role as well) remains far from common but it’s not unprecedented. Although a fiftyish Caballé recorded the role for the second Joan Sutherland version, she was probably few people’s ideal innocent virgin.

However, Patricia Brooks, Margherita Rinaldi, Eva Mei, Lella Cuberli and a young Antonacci have done the role more successfully—Nancy Tatum, not so much. Mariella Devia’s recent first assumption of the title role also paired her with a soprano Adalgisa, Carmela Remigio. After Caballé, the most illustrious soprano to try a bit of Adalgisa is Mirella Freni in the second act duet with Renata Scotto.

Even so, the choice of Korean coloratura Sumi Jo as Adalgisa was a surprise. I must admit that the soprano hasn’t really been much on my radar—I’ve only heard her once in person as Oscar at the Met over 20 years ago and her recordings have mostly escaped my notice; however, her sweet fragile Adalgisa is rather touching. While older than Bartoli, she sings with a girlish freshness which is remarkably different from some other soprano Adalgisas.

Surprisingly her coloratura is rather choppy (perhaps to match her partner’s?). And there is a clear avoidance of long loud high notes—everything is touched then gotten off quickly. Her fearful capitulation to Pollione as he intently breaks her down in their duet concluding the first scene is shockingly convincing, as is her devastation at his appearance at Norma’s home.

The announcement several years ago that Bartoli was planning to do Norma in concert was characteristically met with both eager anticipation and dismissive derision. What on earth was a small-voiced baroque and Rossini mezzo doing tackling a role so closely identified with some of the grandest sopranos of the postwar era: Caballé, Sutherland and, most of all, Maria Callas?

Those two concert performances led to sessions for this recording which spanned April 2011 to January 2013, while her first fully staged Norma (again with Antonini, Osborn and Pertusi) arrives on May 17 at the 1500-seat Haus für Mozart during the Salzburg Pfingsten Festival of which she is the artistic director. Further performances will follow during the summer festival there.

Bartoli argues in an extended essay accompanying the CD that her research into the life and career of Maria Malibran for her Maria recording led her to believe that some bel canto works usually thought of as high soprano vehicles were really conceived for women who today would likely be called mezzo sopranos, particularly Malibran and Giuditta Pasta, Bellini’s first Norma and Amina in La Sonnambula.

Adjusting the tuning down to what something close to what would have been the norm in the 1830s—A=430 for this recording—reinforces Bartoli’s claims. She also argues that the darker color of a mezzo contrasts more effectively with the soprano intended by Bellini for Adalgisa.

Surely we have all heard (or heard of) sopranos whose repertoire more commonly consists of verismo operas or late Verdi performing Norma without the necessary agility or bel canto nuance required by Bellini. Though they surely have their fans, one wonders what the composer might have thought of the portrayals of, say, Gina Cigna, Zinka Milanov or Ghena Dimitrova?

Even the great Lilli Lehmann who introduced in 1890 Norma to the MET where she had debuted as Carmen and was by then also a famed Brünnhilde was criticized by W. J. Henderson in The New York Times at that first performance for her lack of stylistic refinement:

It must be said, however, that Frau Lehmann took many of the elaborate ornamental passages at a very moderate tempo and sang them with very evident labor, thus depriving them of much of that brilliancy which the smooth, mellow, pliable Italian voices impart to them. Fiorituri without brilliancy have no “raison d’étre,” and no Italian diva of standing would have received half the applause that Frau Lehmann did for singing these passages as she did. The audience was excited by astonishment at the fact that she could do it at all.

Initially skeptical that Bartoli had any business singing this role, I came away with a mixture of admiration and disappointment. It’s clear throughout that she has thought deeply about Norma and her command of many of its difficulties is impressive.

It’s a joy to hear a native Italian sing Norma (she is one of few in the postwar era—among the others, Scotto, Anita Cerquetti, and Fiorenza Cedolins). However, one can hear Bartoli attempting to use her vivid declamation of the text to compensate for moments when she is overpowered vocally, and, too often, her very dramatically rolled r’s go way over the top.

For those who have followed her career over the past two-and-a-half decades, much of the singing will not be a surprise: the rich mellow middle voice remains steady and eloquent, while ascents to the top become small and breathy—those high C’s at the climax of “Oh non tremare” lack the required visceral sting. However, the long legato lines of “Casta diva” or “Teneri figli” are floated eloquently on an apparently endless supply of breath.

Sadly the “Gatling gun” coloratura that has plagued much of her singing for the past decade has only gotten worse, more detached and mechanical. Apparently it doesn’t bother much of her audience as I’ve attended concerts where reams of these pecked-at notes are greeted with ecstatic cheers. For me, it remains the least attractive aspect of her singing but then I’ve always felt her to be most accomplished at adagio rather than allegro.

The more intimate scenes unsurprisingly shine whereas the more dramatic, public ones often fall short: her cries for war sound puny while the two scenes with Adalgisa reveal a hushed intimacy that is truly moving. The final scene poses the biggest challenges and exposes some of Bartoli’s weakest moments; in particular the “In mia man” duet with Pollione lacks the ideal ferocity and those wonderful rising trills on “Adalgisa fia punita; nelle fiamme perirà” don’t sound at all.

However, her “Qual cor tradisti” (where Osborn is finally able to suppress the “bray” in this tone) and her pleading “Deh non volerli vittime” are lovingly spun on an aching thread of silvery tone that proves most moving, particularly as the intense chorus cries implacably for her death.

That Bartoli feels the need to similarly plead with the audiences of the world for her right to sing Norma is disturbing. Artists should take risks and challenge themselves, and throughout her career Bartoli has never embraced the obvious path. I also suspect that no amount of historical argument about Pasta or Bellini will convince those who will choose to perceive this project as a huge act of hubris.

However, since there can never be a truly definitive interpretation of this (or any) great role (not Callas with Serafin, not Caballé at Orange, not Sutherland with Marilyn Horne), it remains important for artists such as Bartoli to continue to offer up their talents and insights to help keep Norma a living work—rather than something that we don’t need to re-examine as it was already done “right” decades ago!

All in all, Bartoli’s portrayal is a surprising, uneven, yet impressive achievement. In many ways I prefer her to her contemporaries like Edita Gruberová whose hard-edged, impossibly un-Italianate manner always seems so wrong for bel canto. Devia’s uneven recent assumption of the role (performed near her 65th birthday) has many fascinating qualities but one is frequently saddened by her having waited so late to take it on.

Unlike many, I find Angela Meade an appealing artist and look forward to her upcoming Met performances (a friend attended her recent Norma in DC and ventured that she had improved immeasurably from her first attempts at Caramoor) with the promising Jamie Barton as Adalgisa and who can resist Meade’s high D at the end of the trio?

One wonders how co-editor of the new critical edition Minasi will feel about the Met’s presumably musicologically unenlightened production this fall when his wife Kate Aldrich performs Adalgisa opposite Sondra Radvanovsky, whose Norma I await with hopeful trepidation.

Meanwhile Bartoli continues explore new roles: next season brings her first Alcina in a new production of Handel’s opera in Zurich, along with a surprising return to her Rossini mezzo roots with her first Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri, with Jean-Christophe Spinosi conducting his period group Ensemble Matheus.

Renata Scotto is perhaps the finest artist of my generation, a truly poetic interpreter blessed with superb musicianship and fearless, almost reckless commitment to her art. She was also my first diva.

First I read about her: a review of her first two Columbia recital discs in High Fidelity, strong praise for the beauty of her voice and particularly for the sense of style in offbeat Verdi and warhorse verismo. I tracked down the discs at Baton Rouge’s one record shop with a decent opera section, and I heard: a uniquely energetic, lean sound, ravishing in pianissimo, fiery in forte, with an exhilarating sense of on-the-edge forward propulsion.

Meanwhile I was reading about her in Opera News. This guy Robert Jacobson was (as I would say today) a very major Scotto queen. I remember his awe as he discussed her Met “comeback” in Vespri Siciliani, and his amazement and joy at her assumption of the three lead soprano roles in the Met’s new-that-season Trittico. Wow, I thought, if these performances were anything like the excerpts on those Columbia discs, those lucky New Yorkers really must have heard something special. Lucky New Yorkers!

Then I found out that the Met’s annual tour to Dallas included the Trittico. With Scotto! And Dallas is only 12 hours from Baton Rouge by bus! Well, as it turned out, I didn’t get to Dallas by bus (another story), but I got there. And I must say the Met really put its best foot forward for me: Carmen with Troyanos and Leona Mitchell (what a voice!). Aida with Arroyo, Dunn, McCracken and Quilico (about which all I can remember is that Martina threw her back out during the Triumphal Scene, and thus had to die standing up). A perfectly passable Figaro in which Lucine Amara really sang the Contessa.

And then came the night that changed [or, poetically, began] my life. Before Trittico, I enjoyed opera; after Trittico I knew had found my religion.

Now I should preface this with the confession that I approached this performance with one reservation: I couldn’t figure out how anyone who looked like Scotto could be a real diva. Her album cover photos revealed a short, dumpy, fortyish woman with a taste for ruffled organza, heavy eye makeup, faux pearls and frosted hair. Frankly, she looked like Prunella Scales in Fawlty Towers. In no way did she measure up to my standard of operatic glamour, which was Maria Callas, florid in red velvet (Tosca) or svelte in black chiffon (Carmen).

Well, it’s funny how these things work out. My first sight of Scotto was as Giorgietta in Il tabarro, and, hey, the blonde bouffe and the come-fuck-me heels and the double chin all worked – she was supposed to look like a sgualdrina, right? And only five minutes into the opera, I was so mesmerized by her committed plastique (the exact visual analogue of her vocal style) that I forgot, then and forever, Scotto’s limitations of appearance. From that moment until now, she has always looked to me like the character, period.

I recall the fire and passion of her Giorgetta, and the terrifying abandon with which she flung herself around that precarious barge setting. I recall the oddly moving blend of tenderness and revulsion with which she regarded Michele (Cornell MacNeil) in the final scene. Most vivid of all, still audible in my mind’s ear, is the huge crescendo she made on the high C in her “nostalgia” aria, from whisper to full-throated cry, evoking with a single sound the character’s desperate hunger to escape her stifling conventional life.

Scotto ruined the role of Suor Angelica for me. Perhaps Diana Soviero can match La Scotto (I have not been fortunate enough to hear Ms. Soviero live in this part) but no one could ever surpass her. Besides her hauntingly beautiful singing (the rubato and portamento effects in “Senza mamma” were those only the greatest of artists would dare– and Scotto made every liberty she took sound inevitable), I remember best the look on her face as she returned to the stage to brew the fatal potion. She literally glowed from within.

Her interpretation of the Miracle was breathtaking: with no help from the Meet’s cheapjack production (a single white floodlight stood in for the Heavenly Host) she walked slowly upstage toward her “baby”, then crumpled, as if the spirit had simply and suddenly departed her mortal form. After perhaps a minute of breathless silence, the 4000 in the audience burst into what can only be called a riot of cheers, bravos, applause and sobs. The weeping diva staggered out for perhaps a dozen curtain calls, and then THE APPLAUSE CONTINUED UNTIL THE MAESTRO ENTERED THE PIT TO BEGIN GIANNI SCHICCI– a half-hour at least!

And her Lauretta was at once adorable and wonderfully funny– one roll of her eyes during “O mio babbino caro” had the audience howling and applauding at the same time! The climax of this opera was Schicci’s (Cornell MacNeil) entrance during the final love duet: he listened, rapt, to La Scotto soaring up to a radiant high D-flat, then hissed his final sung line (“Get out of my house”) to the departing relatives in a tone that suggested, “You idiots almost made me miss my daughter’s gorgeous singing!”

And that was only the first time I heard Scotto. There were many more, and she never, never disappointed. Now, about that fistfight in standing room with the jerk who called her “Miss Piggy” . . . perhaps some other time!

Cast your votes in the categories below, cher public. Polls will close at midnight on Sunday, May 19 and the winners announced the following day.

Earlier of the two most nearly correct entries was that of Etienne F., followed within just a few hours by the solution proposed by k0000.

Each of these two sharp-eared contestants missed singers 3 and 10. If you want, just for fun, to try once more to pick this pair out of the lineup, here is the original quiz.

And now, the complete correct list of singers:

1. Birgit Nilsson
2. Rita Hunter
3. Christine Brewer
4. Violeta Urmana
5. Gwyneth Jones
6. Edda Moser
7. Marjorie Lawrence
8. Gertrud Grob-Prändl
9. Helen Traubel
10. Ingrid Bjoner
11. Marilyn Horne
12. Germaine Lubin
13. Montserrat Caballe
14. Frida Leider
15. Margaret Harshaw
16. Amy Shuard
17. Eileen Farrell
18. Astrid Varnay
19. Grace Bumbry
20. Kirsten Flagstad
21. Anita Välkki
22. Martha Mödl
23. Johanna Gadski
24. Leonie Rysanek
25. Matti Salminen

The tiebreaker, La Cieca has decided, will be the timestamp, and the winner of the lavish box set of Wagner at the Met: Legendary Performances is Etienne F. For k0000, La Cieca extends a consolation prize of a coveted Amazon Gift Card.

Thanks to all for playing!

The transmission, beginning at 1:00 pm, features Zeljko Lucic and Nadja Michael as the scheming Scottish couple, in a production by Martin Kusej, conducted by Massimo Zanetti.

“Im intensiven Gespräch mit dem Regisseur Burkhard C. Kosminski haben wir die Möglichkeit der Abänderung einzelner Szenen diskutiert. Dies lehnt er aus künstlerischen Gründen ab. Selbstverständlich haben wir auch aus rechtlichen Gründen die künstlerische Freiheit des Regisseurs zu respektieren.” [Emphasis added.]

So there you have it: figure out which are the two leading entries, which are the two slots both have guessed incorrectly, conjure up the names of the two mystery singers, and the copy of Wagner at the Met: Legendary Performances is yours for the taking.

Remember: Saturday, May 11, 2013 at 11:00 am ends the competition, so this is your last chance!

Newcomers interested in joining the Slipped Disc Society should note that anyone who dares to read the book under discussion, or who considers any action besides banning an unread but controversial book, will be summarily excluded from the group’s inner circle, the “Echo Chamber.” (Photo: Cory Weaver)

According to information emanating from inside the Met, La Cieca understands that tthe long-range plan was originally that the Robert Lepage staging, Machine and all, would be set aside, no doubt in a silk-lined, climate-controlled cube of the purest crystalline diamond, for four seasons. The Ring was to return at the close of the 2016-2017 season for three cycles.

But, for whatever reasons (and La Cieca is confident you will not be shy about guessing), this reapearance has been canceled, with (so far as we know) no revival in the foreseeable future.

So will the Met just sit dark for all those April and May nights and the contracted artists sit around munching bonbons? Hardly! Your doyenne’s spies report that these slots will be filled with two attractions, one perhaps a bit more attractive than the other.

The company’s current production of Der Fliegende Holländer will return for five performances, featuring Michael Volle, Christine Goerke and Jay Hunter Morris.

Concurrently the Met will introduce a new production of Rusalka, and here the details are a bit more misty. The title role is assigned to Kristine Opolais, and it is reasonable to assume that Ring artist Eric Owens will roll over to Vodnik.

As for the production, La Cieca assumes it will not be created entirely new for the Met but shared with some other company. The most likely candidate would be the David McVicar staging to be introduced at Lyric Opera of Chicago next February.

However, there is also a slight chance the duties will be assigned to Martin Kusej, whose production of this work at the Bayerische Staatsoper was a career breaktrough for La Opolais. According to information that is still in flux (how like information!), Kusej was scheduled to direct a Verdi opera for the Met in 2016-2017, but that project has been postponed or canceled. Thus the Met might decide to have him fulfill his contract by directing the Dvorak opera instead.

Oh, and speaking of Eric Owens, he will also star that season in L’amour de loin, which has replaced the originally planned Saint François d’Assise in the Met’s repertoire.

This snippet of operatic history was supplied by a St. Petersburg-based parterre lurker (Spasibo bolshoe!) and we have arte live web to thank for the following complete telecast of the event:

The 2013-2014 season, featuring four new productions, will include a world premiere and a U.S. premiere. The season begins with Baden-Baden 1927: a staged evening of four one-act operas that appeared together at the Baden-Baden Festival in 1927, from October 23 – November 1, 2013 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, followed by a co-production with Trinity Church, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée aux enfers from January 1-5, 2014.

The season continues in February with a double bill co-produced with and staged at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, consisting of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda by Monteverdi, and a newly commissioned work, I Have No Stories to Tell You, by Gotham Chamber Opera Composer-In-Residence Lembit Beecher. The United States premiere of The Raven by Toshio Hosakawa at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater concludes the season in May 2014 as part of the New York Philharmonic’s inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL.

More details of GCO’s tantalizing program may be found in this PDF.