Call it brio, joie de vivre, zest, élan vital, perhaps Lebenslust. You might even call it “fun.” But no matter what you call it, that’s not the mood Renée Fleming was in when she dropped in for lunch with Muse at Bloomberg.
Leave it to those Torontonians to blow the lid off an opera story happening in New York! (Goodness knows the local journalists don’t bother.) Did you know that Des McAnuff has been jetting between New York and the west coast, simultaneously directing Faust and Jesus Christ Superstar respectively? Or that future Met seasons will include a Robert Lepage production of The Tempest and McAnuff’s Falstaff? We really do need to get those deucedly clever Canadians cracking on that Citigroup settlement story! [Toronto.com]
At a time when New York’s opera companies are supposed to be going into estivation (I mean, Peter Gelb is in Vietnam, for heaven’s sake!) there’s certainly no lack of breaking news about New York City Opera. Today’s heart-rending roundup, after the jump. Read more »
“Zinta Lundborg is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.” [Bloomberg]
Lots of media news today, so let’s not waste any time! La Cieca congratulates Opera News on the occasion of the mag’s 75th anniversary this month, though your doyenne is willing to swear that the mag doesn’t look a day over 60!
No one, not even the company’s near-septuagenarian General Director/Wälsung, has stumbled thus far in the West Coast cycle of Wagner’s tetralogy; in fact, the only ones complaining are the handful of LaRouche protesters outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Of course, things are bound to heat up when mouthy heldentenor John Treleaven makes his first official appearance of the festival in Siegfried this Thursday. [LA Times]
There’s lots of coverage in both Italian and English-language media today about how Franco Zeffirelli (sort of) called Daniela Dessì “fat.” La Cieca chose this one because it had the funniest pictures. [The Telegraph]
“…a new production of Puccini’s Tosca left a significant segment of the audience booing one of the company’s biggest failures in decades.” [AP, unsigned review, and no wonder]
Cher Public