“’I’m analytical, not wild,’ [Elina] Garanca told an interviewer in 2009. ‘When I’m onstage my brain is running like a computer.’ If that is no way to be a singer, it is also no way to direct an opera.” [New York Times]
“French mezzo-soprano Géraldine Chauvet will make her Met debut as Sesto in this evening’s performance of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, replacing Elina Garanca, who is ill.” (Met press release.)
La Cieca predicts you will be seeing more of the same old puritans at the Met next season, and she’s not just talking about the ones who slouch around during intermission hissing, “You call that a trill?” But uou will also see six new productions (including a Met premiere of a 21st century work) and the local debut of one of opera’s most controversial stage directors. Read more »
La Cieca has been sniffing around her generally reliable (and fragrant) sources, and she thinks she has pieced together a list of the dozen operas to be featured in the 2013-2014 season of “The Met: Live in HD.”
A singer who was monochromatic long before she started appearing in “Obsession by Calvin Klein” circa 1986-styled music videos, Elina Garanca …
La Cieca doesn’t know what to say here, which is absolutely okay in this case because the YouTube after the jump makes all, all clear.
The interpretation of Carmen by Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca has been much debated, many finding her cold and remote, others admiring her subtly smoldering quality. A new Deutsche Grammophon DVD documenting the Met’s January 16, 2010 performances offers us an opportunity to examine the gypsy in close-up. This is certainly not the lusty, passionate, mercurial Carmen of many interpreters. There is no overt hip-swinging sexuality here. It strikes me that this is a Carmen for the head, and not the gut—the most intellectual Carmen of my experience. Rather than following her whims and desires, this Carmen acts with a glorification of [...]
In 1890 Cavalleria rusticana had taken the whole world by storm and in the next decade or so, hordes of composers, willing or unwillingly, jumped on the Verismo bandwagon. La navarraise (1894) is generally considered Jules Massenet’s homage to the genre, and for a long time the two works were often performed together. Emma Calvé, the creator of the title role in Massenet’s opera, and one of the most illustrious champions of the Verismo movement, frequently appeared in the two operas in the same evening.
Cher Public