Headshot of La Cieca

Cher Public

  • steveac10: What I saw in Ballo was a real sense of dramatic commitment onstage, combined with mostly fine... 12:11 PM
  • RosinaLeckermaul: Exactly, antikitschychick! The problem with the RIGOLETTO was not the neon or the pole dancer.... 12:11 PM
  • messa di voce: I thought the Ballo was the most consistently satisfying – sets, costumes, staging, singing,... 12:03 PM
  • armerjacquino: Hahaha! “IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN BOSTON! OR SWEDEN! SHOOT ME!” 12:02 PM
  • armerjacquino: Her Lady M is great, and there’s a wonderfully demented DEVEREUX finale you might... 12:01 PM
  • Jamie01: I didn’t vote since i didn’t see every nominee, but is it really possible that Voigt’s... 11:56 AM
  • zinka: httpv://www.youtub e.com/watch?v=u46u Bc-cQzA Love this guy..James King born May 22, 1925..Wagner’ ;s... 11:56 AM
  • marshiemarkII: Bianchissssima! you mean you figured it out? why don’t you spill the beans then, prior to... 11:54 AM

Teen spirit

Now that the Met’s 2013-2014 season has been published and almost immediately discussed to death, La Cieca thought it would be amusing to do a bit of speculation about what lies ahead as we approach the middle of the decade. An assemblage of gossip and guesswork about the 2014-2015 season follows the jump, and won’t it be fun to look back on this post next February when the official announcement is made? Read more »

Found object

Well, you can slash La Cieca’s veins, drink her blood and trample her corpse, because she did not see this one coming! According to the very reliable échotiers over at Forum Opera, Placido Domingo will sing his first Conte di Luna in Vienna Berlin in November of this year opposite the Leonora of Anna Netrebko!

Senior moment

Being an opera lover in Los Angeles is a lot like being a Red Sox fan.  As hard as they try we never make it to the World Series, let alone the playoffs. The Chandler family who owned the LA Times, and in particular Dorothy “Buffie” Chandler who raised the money to build the Music Center downtown, and put her name on its biggest theater there in a stunning display of humility, weren’t opera fans. They loved the LA Philharmonic and, of course, we had to have a suitable holy shrine for the Oscar ceremony because this is an industry town. The New York City Opera would visit in the summers from ‘66 to ‘82 but the Chandlers, and Buffie in particular, actually discouraged an opera company. We had to essentially wait for her to slip into senility before someone could start one. That finally happened in 1986 when Peter Hemmings and Placido Domingo started the LA Opera and things began to change. Very gradually.   Read more »

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She said, he said

So Placido Domingo was all like, “Oh, that Anne Midgette is just a mean girl and she is SO JELLUS,” and then Anne was like, “Actually, nuh-uh, maestro, I’m so not.”

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The world of tomorrow

“Sony Classical is proud to announce the signing of an exclusive recording contract with Plácido Domingo. This new agreement brings the legendary singer back to the company where his unparalleled recording career started in the late 1960s. Sony Classical’s catalog boasts many of his milestone recordings, and the renewed collaboration between Mr. Domingo and the label promises to explore new repertoire areas and showcase fascinating new aspects of this great artist.” [via Slipped Disc]

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A fjord in his future

La Cieca is not sure if this is a casting announcement or the result of a particularly silly round of Mad Libs: Plácido Domingo will add yet another notch to his repertoire, the title role of Der Fliegende Holländer, in a production at the Arena di Verona in the summer of 2013, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. [L'arena]

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Give until it hurts

Sadly reduced to penury by music fans illegally downloading his music, the once-mighty Placido Domingo has resorted to whoring himself out to a recording industry organization whose noble purpose is to assure that sleazy A&R people continue to afford top-quality cocaine and hookers hard-working artists will receive just compensation for their work. Well, the legendary tenor has to keep busy after all, and apparently in the middle of worldwide recesssion nobody seems to think it’s a good idea to give him another opera company to run into the ground. [Bloomberg]

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Our weapons are useless

“With a career spanning half a century, Placido Domingo continues to be firmly against leaving the stage, where presently he is triumphing in his role as Oreste in the production of Iphigenie en Tauride that is being performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.” [Fox News]

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