Now that it has become obvious that the Robert Lepage Ring is the production of exactly no one’s dreams, La Cieca thought it would be fun, or at least comforting, to speculate a bit about exactly what an ideal Ring production should be. Following up on last year’s popular Bühnenweihfestspielkrieg competition, she issues you, the cher public, a challenge to be detailed after the jump. Read more »
More innovative casting from amazon.com
For those of you not fortunate or not conscientious enough to attend Atys at BAM this week, there’s a video document of the production (taped earlier this year) following the jump.
La Cieca invites the cher public to visit The Little Shop of Arias (your doyenne’s Amazon store) for all those last-minute holiday shopping needs!
Incredible, but true, I Puritani had not been performed in Great Britain since 1887 when Glyndebourne decided to stage it in 1960 with the main intention to showcase Joan Sutherland, who had been catapulted to international superstardom one year earlier in the legendary Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden. Furthermore, Vittorio Gui, who had already been introducing the Glyndebourne audiences to Rossini, was eager to add more belcanto works to the repertoire of that opera company. This effort is now documented on the CD just released on the Glyndebourne Enterprise label.
Now available on Amazon.com: James Levine: Celebrating 40 Years at the Met – CD Box Set and James Levine: Celebrating 40 Years at the Met – DVD Box Set, as recently reviewed on parterre.com.
At the request of a member of the cher public, La Cieca has updated the Little Shop of Arias store here at parterre. Available for preorder from amazon.com are such goodies as a new DVD of I puritani starring Nino Machaidze and Juan Diego Flórez.
A long-awaited DVD from the Met documents one of the great “42nd Street” episodes in operatic history: on December 20, 1980, a largely unknown Julia Migenes (or Migenes-Johnson, as she was called in those days) stepped in on a few hours’ notice for an ailing Teresa Stratas as the anti-heroine of Berg’s Lulu. A prodigiously gifted and multifaceted artist, Migenes had already graced Broadway and German television prior to making her Met debut in 1979 as Jenny in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
There is no cry heard more often these days than, “Where are all the Verdi sopranos?!?” Yes, there was a day when we had the likes of Aprile Millo, Eva Marton, Leontyne Price, Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Leonie Rysanek, Zinka Milanov and Antonietta Stella all singing in the same, say 25 or 30 years. While we do have a few adept Verdi sopranos, the one most promising for “Legendary” status is Sondra Radvanovsky, whose new album Verdi Arias all but seals her status as a leader in the crowd of Verdi specialists.
Cher Public