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Cher Public

  • Angelo Saccosta: Sorry, Signor Tenore. I thought I was still talking to Samir...
  • Angelo Saccosta: Yes, Samira. May Jane Phillips Matz first wrote about her in...
  • operacat: CAMILLE -- The Houston Opera website which is doing the Zamb...
  • Ercole Farnese: I had no idea la Traviata has a fourth act....
  • Indiana Loiterer III: Oedipe:The whole passage you quote, moving as it is, dep...
  • Feldmarschallin: I think either Elsa Msxwell or Getrude Stein need to be Fric...
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  • Lindoro Almaviva: Not long ago we were talking in these pages as to how some r...
  • Will: It simply means that you cast the role with the singer or ac...
  • Will: Camilla Williams, who broke the color barrier for black wome...

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Gaîté Parterrienne

gaiCongratulations to the many, many of the cher public (pictured above) who really outgayed themselves (if such a thing is possible) with their vigorous and multiple entries in the “Tout gai!” video competition. The results of these perverse efforts can best be summed up in the phrase “gayer than eight guys fucking nine guys,” which also, coincidentally, describes La Cieca’s usual method of selecting a winner from among several front-runners. But she thought better of that, and she hopes that you, the cher public, can help her make her decision, post-jump. Read more »

Barge and in charge

del_trediciSome things, like hearing an evening of chamber music on a barge in the East River, sound better on paper than they actually are. And some things work exactly the opposite way: for example, the composer David del Tredici. Bargemusic presented soprano Courtenay Budd in a program of two song cycles from the 1990s by the iconoclastic composer Saturday night as part of their Here and Now series.

Neo-Romantic is not the most fashionable moniker for a composer these days, and art song is a tricky territory for composers with unabashedly traditional or sentimental leanings (Leonard Bernstein’s Arias and Barcaroles comes to mind.) But del Tredici gives us music that is direct and honest but remains in the realm of tasteful and new.  Read more »

Overload

11

“Mr. Okulitch and Mr. Hardy have matching black briefs over which they each wear half of a single suit: Giovanni, the jacket; Leporello, the pants. When they switch identities, they trade suit parts, again a vivid metaphor, and made more striking because both singers are so buff.” [NYT]

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Gayer than…?

What? Springtime? Adam Lambert? An Ungaro Spring frock (pictured)? Or that old standby, “gayer than eight guys fucking nine guys?” (Not pictured, alas) Yes, all those things are gay, and some are even gay gay gay gay gay. But nothing is or ever was as gay as this:

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