Lots of chatter in the British press about the Rowley rowdydow at the Garden, but what interests La Cieca the most is the pictorial evidence that Laurent Pelly‘s production of Robert le Diable looks exactly like a biscuit box.
“So meandering and ragged a reading would be alarming at a first rehearsal; for a first night, it was a scandal. During curtain calls, the audience jokingly booed Struckmann’s villain. They should have saved their catcalls for the maestro.” [New York Post]
Evgeny Nikitin has withdrawn from the Bayreuth Festival’s new production of Der Fliegende Holländer after a German television program revealed the bass-baritone has a swastika tattoo. His departure leaves the company with only three days to find a replacement for the production, which opens the festival on Wednesday. [via AFP] Read more »
The Teatro dell’Opera di Roma is “considering actions to be taken to protect the image of the Foundation of its workers and their audiences” following Fabio Luisi‘s cancellation of his participation in Elektra at that theater in order to make time to help clean up the Levineshchina in New York. [Teatro dell'Opera di Roma]
Lovely Marina Poplavskaya, arriving at the Mercedes T. Bass Grand Tier for dinner following the opening night of La traviata, demonstrates that the previous Franco Zeffirelli production has not gone to waste. The latter-day Scarlett O’Hara‘s motto: “Reduce Reuse Recycle!”
Two versions, and it’s hard to say which one is more revolting, of one of the least savory moments in the life of Leonard Bernstein.
During rehearsals for the upcoming Rigoletto from Mantova, Zubin Mehta attacks Sandro Bondi, Berlusconi’s Minister of Culture. Mehta is angry, and by his own admission, he becomes “cattivo”, nasty, when speaking about the financial cuts of the Berlusconi government in the opera houses.
As perhaps you know, if there’s anyone Norman Lebrecht hates more than opera singers and superstar conductors, it’s artists’ managers. So imagine his glee when he got his mitts on an email “leaked… in the dark of night” detailing “the balance of terror that prevails between a soloist and the person who supposedly has his or her best interests at heart…. the stuff of nightmares.”
Cher Public