A century ago, Mary Garden parlayed an interview with the New York Times on the subject of her bizarre attire into blatant promotion for an upcoming tour date. Miss Garden truly was the Lady Gaga of her day. [The Awl]
La Cieca’s faithful spies once again have done their jobs well! What you learned here a week and a half ago about refitting to the Met stage to accommodate the ginormous weight of the Lepage Ring set has finally made its way into the New York Times. Also (love him or hate him) you have to give props to Peter Gelb for chutzpah: the reinforced stage, he says, now can support so much weight that “We can add elephants to Zeffirelli productions.” [NYT]
See, La Cieca thinks Brian Kellow is asking for trouble when, in the second paragraph of his analysis of last March’s Slatkinshchina, he admits, “I did not attend the March 29 opening-night performance of La Traviata, nor did I listen to it on Sirius Radio.” Read more »
Remember those figures you read yesterday in the New York Times citing salaries of the heads of the Metropolitan Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and New York City Opera? Well, not so much. In fact, Zarin Mehta's reported compensation was off by only 230%. [NYT]
"A report was posted soon after on Parterre.com, an opera blog, that Mr. Slatkin had been removed from further performances." [NYT]
La Cieca is delighted to begin a new series on parterre.com dedicated to the fretting, brooding and dithering of the Wazier of the Worriers, Anthony Tommasini. Our first examples (of many) follow the jump. Read more »
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