Apparently, opera fans got the bright side of the bargain: say “Macbeth” in the theater and you court cataclysm; utter the name in the opera house and, as often as not, you merely predict disappointment. Read more »
Is this the new Mari Lyn? Read more »
At long last, the most closely guarded secret of 2011 (besides, you know, everything about what’s going to happen to City Opera) is about to be revealed. Ladies and public, the Second Annual Parterre Cher Public Choice Awards! Read more »
“It’s just that it seems rather perverse to have cast such opulent voices and then given them not much to sing…. the role of Anna Nicole would not stretch Danielle de Niese.” Loyal parterrian Jondrytay (not pictured) looked in on the Royal Opera’s Anna Nicole and shared this thoughts on his blog Not So Wunderbar.
“Tyler Perry‘s… For Colored Girls does feel like a ghoulish joke, a dated horror show bordering on parody. It’s both operatic and tone deaf, with explosions of hysteria that include a drunken Macy Gray performing a back-alley abortion and the conversion of a poem spoken by [Ntozake] Shange‘s Lady in Purple into an actual opera by Perry’s regular composer Aaron Zigman (called La Donna In Viola). During the opera, the film cuts back and forth between a doomed couple silently watching the performance (the husband is on the down low, unbeknownst to the wife) and another character being savagely date-raped.” [...]
What a concept, or La Cieca should say what a concept! This is Regie at its finest and most boldly satirical, genius that makes Graham Vick look like two-day-old steak frites. For this production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, the director (unnamed, alas in the YouTube clip below) utilizes the cinematic convention of the flash-forward in a postmodern epoch-bending variation. What if, this staging asks, Manon were to survive her various torments and travails? What would her life be like at, say, age 60? And what if, instead of hanging around mosquito-ridden Louisiana, she invested in a condo in Miami Beach [...]
Maria Guleghina‘s Turandot on PBS right now, and, holy hell, I didn’t realize just how incredibly awful it sounded. How could anyone let such a thing be released — no, escape — on HD?
Cher Public