parterre box

That favorite strawman of closed-minded critics, “Regie opera,” is the target of yet another limp-noodle critical flailing, this time from a chap by the name of Geoffrey Wheatcroft – as if someone whose mugshot is so obviously a emblem of bowtied entitlement has any right to pronounce judgment on anyone else’s visual taste. Just how tired is the Wheatcroft whinge? Well, he’s still complaining about the Peter Sellars production of Nozze di Figaro, a staging that hasn’t been revived since the late 1980s. [The Guardian]

In the wake of last week’s Republican nominating convention, La Cieca was just thinking to herself, “what the world needs now is another overprivileged white male complaining about political correctness.”  And, lo and behold, her wish was granted in the form of an interview with none other than Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber:

“So many people nowadays are obsessed with things offending people. Today people say you can’t do this because it will offend that community, and then you can’t say this because the Muslims will be offended by it and we’ll end up being talked out of it. Talked out of ideas.”

Among the explosively controversial projects Lloyd Webber is currently working on: a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, and a TV reality series casting the role of “Dorothy” for a stage revival of The Wizard of Oz.  He mentions that the program may (just may, mind you) go on to cast the role of Toto as well, but La Cieca is sure that these days, they’ll be forced to call the character an infidel dog.

[via The Press Association]

My dears, you only thought the whingeing about the Met ticket exchange line was over. Now that the shell-shocked and frostbitten survivors of the Gelb Gulag have dragged themselves back to their rent-controlled flats on upper Columbus Avenue, the next stage of the protest against the Met’s barbaric practices can begin.

As in every violent political coup, the freedom fighter eventually must embrace guerrilla tactics. The insurgents have already launched a volley of intemperate letters to the editor in The New York Times, peppered with such stinging rebukes as “Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, would be ill advised to ignore, dismiss and anger longstanding subscribers and fans of the Metropolitan Opera…. As any astute arts manager knows, a solid subscriber base is key to the financial stability of a performing arts group.” Strong stuff!

But when a dictatorship is so entrenched that it withstands a strongly-worded letter, there is only one option left on the table: an option so horrible and inhumane that La Cieca hesitates to mention it for fear of seeming to endorse so drastic a measure. If Peter Gelb is not ready to apologize to all those footsore subscribers and, at the very least, offer them sherry and biscuits, at least one of the undertrodden has suggested, “those of us who have cited bequests to the Metropolitan Opera in our wills contact our lawyers and leave bequests instead to other organizations that do not have an attitude.”

Yes, the old “I’m cutting you out of my will” ploy, so beloved of passive-aggressive dowagers in 19th century English literature, will surely send the right (handwritten, delivered by footman) message to the futuristic monolith that is The Metropolitan Opera.