The freshest imaginable gay hell in the December issue of Vogue: a fashion shoot based on the Richard Jones/Met production of Hansel and Gretel — with Lady Gaga in the Philip Langridge part! Plus… Annie Leibovitz! Grace Coddington! Marc Jacobs! Cate Blanchett! Oh, you know you want to know what’s after the jump! Read more »
If you’re wondering why the relatively inexperienced George Steel was tapped for the demanding job of hauling the New York City Opera out of the basement — instead of front-runner Francesca Zambello, well, maybe this is why:
Zambello, currently in London creating a joint Royal Opera and Royal Ballet production of Tchaikovsky’s comic rarity “The Tsarina’s Slippers” … in discussion with producers Ben Sprecher and Louise Forlenza over whether “Rebecca” should open in North America or London…. three-quarters of her way through a Ring cycle for San Francisco Opera and is developing an opera-house-scale version of “Show Boat” at Chicago Lyric Opera… Meanwhile, for the Guthrie in Minneapolis, Zambello and playwright Marsha Norman are adapting Louise Erdrich’s passionate novel “The Master Butchers Singing Club” into a new play with music… also developing a musical with “Les Miserables” composer Claude-Michel Schonberg…. A scaled-down version of Zambello’s Disney show “The Little Mermaid” is in the works…. her current tour of “Little House on the Prairie”….
Or, on the other hand, maybe even the generally clueless NYCO board were appalled at Zambello’s midwestern-drag-show level of visual taste:
The atmosphere around Gotham may become rather more bizarre sometime in the next couple of years when Rufus Wainwright brings his opera Prima Donna into New York. Read more »
Those tiny Czech flags served as red flags for the keen-eyed public, several of whom correctly surmised that last week’s Regie quiz was a production of Prodana nevesta. (The “Mrs. Slocombe from Are You Being Served?” character is Kecal the marriage broker, in this production sung by a bass in drag.) And what, my dears, is going on here?
La Cieca warns you, music writers, she is going to giggle like a madwoman you begin your article with the line “We owe Chicago Opera Theater tremendous thanks for dragging the smaller operas of Benjamin Britten out of the closet…” [Chicago Tribune]
Kudos to tannengrin who identified last week’s Regie puzzler correctly as Nabucco. La Cieca’s heart, though, belongs to Leper Ello, who made a minimally plausible case for Boris Godunov (“The Fool – in drag – laments the future of Russia”). There’s more to lament in this week’s very serious staging.
The world’s newest cult diva returns! Amira Kamel, first Egyptian ever to sing Aida (it says so on YouTube and so it must be true!) adopts for her “barbaric” drag not only the coiffure, maquillage and plastique of legendary Vera Galupe-Borszkh, but seem to have borrowed one of La Dementia’s caftans as well! [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/zl51vG-a1F8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
This vastly superior caption replaces La Cieca’s original, “Rebecca Glasscock back on the pipe?” [Danielle de Niese in Acis e and Galatea at The Royal Opera, photo by Bill Cooper.]
Cher Public