Anthony Tommasini‘s Sunday Times think piece about opera direction (fetchingly adorned with the Susannesque
La Cieca is idly wondering how James Levine‘s back is feeling this morning, after yesterday’s flareup that left him unable to conduct Tosca at the Met last night. Rather an important question, too, since he’s scheduled for that high-profile Stravinsky-Mozart concert with the Boston Symphony tonight.
In the absence of any hard evidence, your doyenne is afraid she’s just going to have to ask the question and hope for someone, somewhere to offer an answer.
So, intangible forces of the Universe, La Cieca asks, “How’s Maestro Jimmy’s back today?” Read more »
The headlined phrase is a neologism (La Cieca should know, because she just made it up) and therefore will require a bit of explanation. Bear with your doyenne, cher public, because there’s eventually going to be a CD review in here somewhere.
So. Many, many years ago, ere the earth was young and all that, La Cieca took it into her pretty little head that she was going to be, if not the next Vera Galupe-Borszkh, perhaps the Mary Curtis-Verna to Mme. Galupe-Borszkh’s Renata Tebaldi. Which is to say, La Cieca was dizzily stagestruck at the idea of performing as a company member of La Gran Scena Opera Co. di New York, and therefore she put herself to work preparing audition repertoire for this august troupe. Read more »
Zachary Woolfe asks the musical question, “Who is this Peter Gelb anyway?” [NY Observer]
La Cieca would like to introduce a new feature to parterre.com in which questions on opera-related etiquette (and probably “life issues” and stuff) sent in by the puzzled, the concerned and, perhaps on occasion, the merely inept. Our first question come to us from “Baffled By the Bay” – I have an opera friend who never fails to bring up how Verdi injected his nationalism into his operas. This same friend overlooks Wagner’s abhorrent extra-musical tendencies. Could you please advise me on a polite way for me to tell my friend to shut his trap? La Cieca thinks this sort [...]
La Cieca hears that after two days of negotiations a “tentative agreement” has been reached between AGMA and the New York City Opera. Members of AGMA will vote on August 20 whether they choose to ratify the agreement as the negotiating committee has recommended. According to our source, AGMA has made “some concessions,” though apparently they are “better” than those made by 802.
La Cieca is simply beside herself to announce what she is confident will be both the biggest and most exciting parterre box competition of all time. This competition is called “Reading the Letter,” and it will test that most basic of opera queen skills, i.e., pretending to be a soprano. After the jump, La Cieca will explain how it works:
[La Cieca is happy to present a guest review by Our Own Lindoro Almaviva.] Cincinnati Opera makes a good case for the 4 act version of Don Carlo. I think it is a great idea that they used projected titles to give us the background of the opera (since we lose the Fontainebleau scene). This gave the production an almost cinematic start and maybe this was the reason why I was more receptive to it. Kudos to whomever had the idea, it worked. The opera was performed in a unit set with some movable parts that gave it variety. Overall, [...]
Cher Public