Post Joan ergo propter Joan? Post Joan ergo propter Joan?

Or, who knows, maybe Pavarotti had stage fright for the first opera he ever sang on stage?

on June 05, 2019 at 6:18 PM
Bête baignoire Bête baignoire

Why, look: Norman Lebrecht has found yet another reactionary cause to embrace!

on November 10, 2015 at 11:17 AM
Artist’s name spelled correctly Artist’s name spelled correctly

Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Brain Tumor Gone and Cancer-Free, to Sing at Helikon Opera in November,” reads the headline.

on November 09, 2015 at 10:10 PM
Dog bites man, part infinity Dog bites man, part infinity

“The soup is hot; the soup is cold; Norman Lebrecht got it wrong again.”

on November 21, 2014 at 10:56 AM
Danielle fires back Danielle fires back

The leading lady of the Bayerische Staatsoper’s production of La Calisto has taken to the Twitters to respond to the recent discussion of her comments about Miley Cyrus.

on January 19, 2014 at 2:23 PM
Hurling Hurling

It shouldn’t take you but a moment to find the great huge clunking error of fact in this Vanity Fair profile of Joyce DiDonato.

on January 04, 2013 at 2:35 PM
Time, after time Time, after time

In breaking news today, Margaret Thatcher announces her resignation as British Prime Minister…

on March 20, 2012 at 10:53 AM

Cher public, La Cieca must inform you that the president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Michael Kaiser (right), is afraid of you (left). “This is a scary trend,”  says he. [via Huffington Post, of all places to climb on your soapbox about “serious arts criticism.”]

on November 15, 2011 at 2:22 PM

Bloomberg’s Zinta Lundborg, best known for sharing a single eye and a single tooth with Manuela Hoelterhoff, overlooked the opera on Wednesday night and instead reviewed the PR for Dark Sisters. When a man writes like this, we call it “bitchy,” so when a woman does it, can’t we call her “dickish?”  

on November 11, 2011 at 11:46 AM

The truth, at last: “By Manuela Hoelterhoff and Zinta Lundborg” [Bloomberg]

on November 26, 2010 at 11:09 AM

“As the flirtatious Musetta, American soprano Takesha Meshe Kizart won the audience’s hearts with the charm and flair of her personality and a potent upper register, including some formidable high C’s for her Waltz Song.” [AP]

on October 17, 2010 at 12:42 PM

Every time La Cieca says she’s through once and for all reading Norman Lebrecht, that middlebrow minstrel of the maestro myth soars to new heights of noisomeness. This time (yet again) it’s about how utterly callous those silly opera singers are for canceling (imagine!) when they’re too sick to sing.  

on August 15, 2010 at 4:45 PM

La Cieca must say that, for a chick, Katharina Wagner sure doesn’t talk much. But perhaps her reticence is something of a blessing, since it prevents her from spouting such facile generalizations as “…’Die Meistersinger,’ Hitler’s favorite Wagner opera.”  

on August 14, 2010 at 12:12 PM

It may seem quixotic that La Cieca subscribes to Opera News, and the print version at that, but, after all, the dear people there were kind enough to interview Our Own JJ last summer on the subject of this very cum-blog, so, well, noblesse oblige and all that, you know. Since the mag is showing…

on August 12, 2010 at 10:33 AM

“Renée Fleming‘s thrilling new album ‘Dark Hope’ (Decca) debuts at #151 today on the Billboard Top 200 chart, with the highest first-week sales of the superstar soprano’s storied career…. The debut follows a performance by Fleming of Muse’s ‘Endlessly’ last week on Good Morning America, and major print and online coverage including two arts cover…

on June 18, 2010 at 2:52 PM

What is it about Natalie Dessay, La Cieca wonders, that provokes journalists to badmouth La sonnambula? 

on January 30, 2010 at 11:56 AM

La Cieca thanks a particularly loyal member of the cher public for pointing out the most recent bit of hard-hitting arts coverage in the Wall Street Journal, as copied and pasted by that hardest of all arts hitters, Terry Teachout. La Cieca says “copied and pasted” because in this piece Teachout manages to blather on…

on June 09, 2008 at 6:24 PM