Joyce DiDonato in Maria Stuarda

La DiDonato is joined here by Gabriele Fontana and Eric Cutler in this 2005 video.

Singing, actress

For those of you who were stumped by Lady Number Six, here's the mysterious dame herself, Galina Vishnevskaya, in a more accustomed version of Lady Macbeth, the 1966 film by Mikhail Shapiro of Katerina Izmailova.


The great diva returned to the screen only last year in Alexandra (directed by Alexander Sokurov), playing an elderly woman who makes the trek to Chechnya to visit her grandson, who has been stationed there as a soldier for seven years.

When Ladies Meet

And now, the solution to the "Sleepwalking Scene" quiz.

Ferocious!

The unusual and undreamed-of videos just keep popping up on YouTube. Here's a scene from Norma with Elinor Ross and Mario del Monaco!

A Star is Reborn

That superstar of the podosphere, Miss Frances Gumm, is back after six months of laying fallow. Or is La Cieca thinking of Frank Sinatra? Anyway, one of our absolute favorite online destinations, JudyCast, has returned with its distinctive mélange of entertainment gossip and otherworldy warbling as gaily subversive as ever. (No explanation is given for the hiatus, but La Cieca suspects that the recent TCM screening of the bizarre 1968 flick Skiddoo dislodged whatever was creatively blocking Carol Channing and the other JudyCast partipants.)

Gaîté Ancienne

La fée Manto (Francois Piolino) turns up the heat on old coot Anselme (René Schirrer) in this scene from Rameau's Les Paladins.

Mad about the boy

La Cieca is all for crossover, but...


In response to several questions from commenters, La Cieca will say, no, she does not believe that Vitas takes "the" high e-flat. However, there is another genetic male on YouTube who does have the note: Lallanzinho!

Toy toy toy

The Lego Opera, previously heard performing Il trovatore, has returned with a new and innovative production of Tosca.


Lego bricks outnumber human beings 62 to 1. Did you know that?

Hunk 10, Tenor 3

A gifted amateur by the name of Izzy Anderson takes on Verdi's Duke of Mantua.


Mr. Anderson is one of the regulars on the must-see Wenarto YouTube site. (That's the celebrated Wenarto himself conducting this selection, though usually he is found center stage.)

Spanish inquisition

Given the current lively discussion of Peter Konwitschny's regie of Don Carlos, La Cieca thought the cher public might like to see (and to debate) the "Celestial Voice" scene from this production.

UPDATE: Since the discussion has now broadened to involve the context of this scene, La Cieca has substituted a player with a selection of scenes from this production.

O brother where art thou

An Italian TV report on the already infamous all-Alagna-all-the-time Orphée.



Now, David Alagna may not be one of the world's great stage directors, but he certainly is among the cutest!

You love Lucy

La Cieca pulled a string or two and managed to get permission to embed a clip from the VAI Lucia so recently lauded by Our Own Niel Rishoi. Of course YouTube video and audio is severely compressed, but the imaginative viewer will surely get the gist that this is a performance for the ages.

...and tenderly beckons, Moby Dick, dearest Moby Dick!

As dear Rosalind Russell used to say, "It's about this whale..."

Honestly insincere

[Via Likely Impossibilities]

Kiri gets it right

Karita... after hours

Boldly going

This comes under the heading of "so obvious; why didn't anyone think of this before?" Here's the opening scene of Amok Time: the Opera, a "cabaret opera" presented by Goat Hall Productions in 2006. The music and libretto are by Steven Clark.

Whatever happened to Katia Ricciarelli?

In fact, she became Peggy Lee.

Natalie Déshabillée

La Dessay rehearses the "bathtub scene" from Manon.

Sorry, folks, the video is no longer available for embedding at the request of the uploader, Parsifal1979. You can view it, however, on the YouTube site.

Fun with subtitles

From the 1978 film of Götz Friedrich's production of Tannhäuser -- alas, not currently available on DVD. Dame Gwyneth Jones is the lady asking the rather personal question.

Kaufknabe

A number of the cher public have asked for more photos of hunkalicious Jonas Kaufmann, with a several of you specifially requesting a image without the tenor's accustomed facial stubble. Well, one of La Cieca's dear readers has obliged by sending a snapshot of Kaufmann before he stopped shaving, or possibly before he even started shaving.

The reader recalls performing with Der Junge Jonas circa 1997 when he "still sang Rossini and The Student Prince." A particularly vivid memory is of "Jonas in biker spandex for Proben in Heidelberg!" (The image of Mr. Kauffman's dinner companion has been obscured for reasons of privacy.)

And now here's some contemporary video of the unstubbled Kaufmann in action, singing The Student Prince.

Isn't it romantic?

Jummy Jonas Kaufmann records his recital CD Romantic Arias, due for release in March.

Golden girl

Ageless Reri Grist sings "Somewhere" in a rehearsal for the 19th Annual Gypsy of the Year Competition, celebrated earlier this month. La Grist introduced this song 50 seasons ago when West Side Story premiered on Broadway. She is joined in this clip by Chita Rivera, Carol Lawrence and other members of the original company.

Another song of the season

A concert in Vienna, 2006.

Have Yourself a Hunky Little Christmas

UPDATE: The YouTube clip of Stephen Costello singing "O Holy Night" is no longer available. Given Stephen's ubiquity on YouTube, though, surely it can't be long before another performance of this song goes live, and La Cieca promises to link as soon as her veritable army of sources inform her. In the meantime, here's another number. Right religion, even if it's the "wrong" holiday.

Fatal sdegno

If, through some miracle of recombinant DNA manipulation, Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh and Maria Montez were to have a child together, La Cieca is certain this is how she (or he, for that matter) would turn out.

Druid fluid

"I am big, it's the opera that got small!"

Speaking of Begbick

Magnificent Martha Mödl performs a bit of Mahagonny.

Zaubernacht

A YouTuber new to La Cieca by the name of Promptersbox, has managed to make available the entire La Scala Tristan und Isolde. Your doyenne is not sure exactly where the intense magic in this performance comes from: Patrice Chéreau, Daniel Barenboim or Waltraud Meier. But magic it is!

Trouser snake

Maite Beaumont created a sensation as Sesto in Lyric Opera of Chicago's recent Giulio Cesare. She's seen and heard here as Cherubino.

Fan male

This video indicates some of the underlying reasons for the recent shocking increase in acts of violence against character tenors.

"We're puttin' on an op'ra tonight!"

Mae West goes mezzo-soprano for this scene from her 1935 vehicle Goin' to Town.

Send in the clowns

That "Cate Blanchett" Traviata we were talking about earlier? Turns out there's video of the dress rehearsal.

Demi-filth?

Fiorenza Cedolins gets off to a bad start in this performance of Luisa Miller. La Cieca feels that if you're going to sing like that, you really should avoid the Grayson Hall wig.

Who can that attractive girl be?

La Cieca would never have thought this would work. And yet...

Surely you chest!

And don't call her Shirley! It's the one and only Ruby Hinds singing the cabaletta to "O mio Fernando" at a tribute to Doris Roberts (yeah, go figure) in Beverly Hills.

Another alternative Moment

Joan Sutherland circa 1959, as Lucia, of course.

Mostly mediocre moments

In the words of Stella Maria Krazelberg von und zu Brabant, "Renata was robbed!" La Cieca offers a quick reminder of some moments that should have made the Met's "Top 15" list.

Mean Girl

Luana de Vol takes center stage as the bullying Ortrud in Peter Konwitschny's brilliant production of Lohengrin. Emily Magee is the hapless Elsa.

Do you come from a land down under?

Here's Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Don Giovanni at Opera Australia. La Cieca is, for once, speechless.

UPDATE: Imagine La Cieca's surprise when she found out there is already video of this production!

Moon, June, Spoon

In an unreleased track from Cecilia Bartoli's new "Maria" CD (and you know La Cieca dotes on inédits!), the singer/musicologess performs in English! The song is "Yon moon o'er the mountains," which, as you all know, is one of the hit tunes from Balfe's The Maid of Artois.


In less aesthetically pleasing news, a photo of la Bartoli that should have remained unreleased instead currently graces Opera Chic.

"Today is dedicated to Uranus"

You know that Vivaldi opera everyone's been talking about? (Yeah, La Cieca realizes that sentence looks absurd, but read on.) Anyway, here's the already infamous nude scene for tenor Zachary Stains from the opera Ercole sul Termodonte, or, as it is more generally known in this country, "Hercules versus the Dental Hygienist." (NSFW, obviously, since Mr. Stains' "original instrument" is clearly visible.)

Gaia, isolata, bianca

Legendary opera diva Anna Moffo spreads her wings in a straight film role -- but as a gay character. La Moffo plays the lesbian "Lia" in Das Mädchen Julius. The film concerns the heroine Jules (a girl with a boy's name) who, according to the plot synopsis, as a teenager had a lesbian experience with her governess, Lia, who has taught her to hate men, whom she considers beasts who can bring nothing but harm to a woman.

So, if you ever wondered what a Moffo performance of Gräfin Geschwitz might be like (especially in a production set in the minimalist late 1960s) here's a scene from Das Mädchen Julius.

And all he said was "woof"

In a controversial performance (condemned by Stephen Colbert, praised by Andrew Sullivan), bass-bearitone Kurt Rydl grrrrowls the role of Hagen.


Legendary diva Rosa Ponselle was so impressed by this Götterdämmerung that she dedicated an encore song to Herr Rydl.


The (ahem) versatile basso replied with a video tribute to Nancy Sinatra:

Wheels within wheels

This is why drag was invented. The artistes are James Bondage and Bella ToDyeFor.

Perché non ho del talento?

This performance of the "alternative" entrance aria from Lucia di Lammermoor illustrates why the road not taken probably wasn't such a good idea in the first place. Note, too, how the technical quality of the video production so aptly complements the efforts of the artiste.

Lookism? Again?

Yet another rehash of the great voice vs. waistline debate, this time in the Chicago Daily Herald. Nicole Cabell laments the scarcity of European gyms, while "hunken-tenor" Joseph Kaiser plants his feet firmly on both sides of the fence by declaring, "Essentially if you can be healthy about being healthy, that's the balance to find because there's a lot of unhealthy ways to be 'healthy.'"

Usual suspects Deborah Voigt and Nathan Gunn offer no comment, but "bari-hunk" Mariusz Kwiecien is willing go on the record that he is "not an extremely good looking guy." (Obviously he didn't take a good look at this photo accompanying the article!)

Is anyone surprised to hear that the most sensible one of the bunch is the mezzo? "There is no denying the influence of the mass media culture of today on opera, but I think it's naïve to think that the idea of 'glamour' is nothing new to opera," says Joyce DiDonato. "Look at all the old diva photos from the 1920s and '30s and you see many svelte, sexy ladies at the height of their powers."

La Cieca herself couldn't say it more eloquently, so she'll turn the program over to radiant Rosa Ponselle. The diva is 39 here, just a year before her retirement from the Met:

Robert Goulet, 1933-2007

The Broadway baritone, star of Camelot, died yesterday at the age of 73. Goulet won a Tony Award for for the 1968 Kander and Ebb musical The Happy Time, and most recently appeared on Broadway as Georges in the 2004 revival of La Cage aux Folles. An obituary and appreciation of the performer can be found at Playbill News.