La Cieca admits she’s a little late to the table with this one, but here’s a German TV report on the all-new, all-nude Calixto Bieito production of Gluck’s Armide, currently playing at the Komische Oper. [NSFW, and how rarely La Cieca gets to say that!]
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Heldentenordiva Jon Villars (center, in mohawk) “basically fired himself by walking off the stage” at a public dress rehearsal for the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Fidelio. According to a report in The Globe and Mail, Villars stormed off stage immediately after conductor Gregor Buhl “loudly sang out a few phrases of the tenor’s part” during the second act. Jumping in as Florestan will be Icelandic tenor Jon Ketilsson and later Richard Margison.
A bit of Salome from the Royal Opera, with a somewhat less skittish sense of cinematography than what we got from the Met’s HD!
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Finally a chance to see Naked Busker Guy Duncan Meadows in action! (And, forgive La Cieca for saying so, but if your leading lady sounds like Nadja Michael, you’d better offer your audience something extra for their money.)
Following a performance of Lucia in San Francisco, Our Own “sassy bald” High C’s models the notorious blood-stained t-shirt for none other than Natalie Dessay.
No fooling the cher public this time around: most of you guessed easily that the depicted production was Die Zauberflöte, as staged in the Bundestag subway station in Berlin. [kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/Lf2RNksObiw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
La Cieca was disappointed to hear the news that the New York City Opera next season will present only a few concert performances. Well, in point of fact, she’s surprised that they’re performing at all, but the real problem is that she already had a mental picture of an NYCO Antony and Cleopatra starring Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Lauren Flanigan . . .
Back the photo-only style of Regiequiz, but this production does look awfully chic, doesn’t it? Now if only someone could guess which opera it is!
La Cieca has just learned more details about the Royal Opera’s Naked Executioner Guy and she’s sure that we all want to stay right on top of the story. Naked Executioner Guys’s real name is Duncan Meadows. He is a busker who, like so many in the busking biz, does the bulk of his bulking in the Covent Garden area.
Cher Public