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Cher Public

  • Bianca Castafiore: OMG, whatever happened to these two singers? In particular, whatever happened to La Reneigh... 10:39 PM
  • Bianca Castafiore: I’m surprised Pendatchanska has not sung Norma yet? 10:30 PM
  • derschatzgabber: A ring over 6 nights is the way Wagner did it at the first Bayreuth Festivals. And I am pretty... 10:30 PM
  • Bianca Castafiore: Was she better than Eaglen, Gualtier? Papian? Mescheriakova? 10:30 PM
  • derschatzgabber: P.S. I also recommend the downtown public library. It was designed by Rem Koolhass. Try to take... 10:27 PM
  • Bianca Castafiore: Are you kidding me? Brownlee? He sounded like a little boy in Armida! Sorry, he’s a very... 10:25 PM
  • Bianca Castafiore: I thought Quasthoff performed at least once in Parsifal, but can’t recall which role. 10:00 PM
  • pasavant: Thanks for the info. 9:53 PM

Wack on Wacker

The announcement of the 2013-2014 season at Lyric Opera of Chicago is not good news at all. Read more »

Update on great operatic scandals of the 20th century

Noted junk sculptor Dr. Jonathan Miller is now the subject of a biography and it appears he’s mellowed in his old age. Just joking! He’s as bitter and mean as ever, and now he’s even got Nicholas Hytner doing his badmouthing by proxy: “I happened to see that [1998] Figaro which was hijacked by the most disgustingly plush, scandalously self-absorbed conducting I have ever heard [from that] fat monster in the pit, James Levine.” Brits! You can’t live with them and you can’t kill them.   Read more »

Provocative ad provokes, surprisingly

“But not everyone is amused. On Twitter, SarahDuggers asked: ‘Is it really po-faced and prudish to find these billboards really vulgar and not very nice?’ …. Vivienne Pattison, director of Mediawatch-UK, said the ad was clever in itself but contributed to the hyper-sexualisation of society.” [Evening Standard]

shambolic

Decrease your word power

La Cieca is starting a new series of Words Critics Need to Stop Using.

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All things Brit and beautiful

“Time and tide wait for no one” pontificates Myrtle the barmaid, setting the tone for André Previn’s opera about fleeting romance but enduring love:  Brief Encounter.  Loosely based on the play Still Life by Noël Coward and the screenplay for the film Brief Encounter by Coward and David Lean, this opera (now on CD) tells a similar story to all of its operatic predecessors:  longing, love and loss. 

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Brittania rule the lake

Houston Grand Opera’s Brit-in-Chief Anthony Freud will take an early departure of his post (recently extended to 2015) to move into the power vacuum created by the departure of William Mason from Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2012, says Culturemap Houston.

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Today in corrections

“A profile of Richard Eyre – ‘All good actors are quick-witted’, 27 November, page 12, Review – mentioned the theatre director’s recollection of having played one of the Three Little Maids in a school production of The Pirates of Penzance. Clarification has since come from the interviewee that in Pirates he played Kate, one of four maids, the daughters of Major-General Stanley (the Three Little Maids, for their part, belong to The Mikado).” [The Guardian]

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The return of Glimmertrash

Given the choice, I’ll take Hans Neuenfels.

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