You would think that since La Cieca has heard Parsifal quite a few times, and even given the philosophical implications of the libretto a bit of thought, she would have realized that Schadenfreude is just plain bad news. But no, La Cieca had to go and LAAAAAACH-te at the New York Times obituary of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, particularly their gaffe in identifying a photo of Anneliese Rothenberger as the late diva. Then La Cieca went farther and snickered at the Times‘s correction of the piece. Oh, the bad karma was just aching to bubble to the surface, and so it did. La Cieca ripped and uploaded video clips from a 1980 performance of Elektra to YouTube, proudly identifying the Klytemnästra as “Legendary mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig.” La Cieca was really sure that the singer was Ludwig, though on second thought it seemed perhaps a bit odd that the label on the video identified only Gwyneth Jones and Birgit Nilsson in the cast. So then a few of you, cher public, offered the opinion that perhaps the lady in the video didn’t sound all that much like La Ludwig. Hmmm. Well, yes, long story short: of course it’s not Ludwig. It’s Anny Schlemm. Still a pretty spectacular performance, but, well, La Cieca got it wrong. As soon as she posts this, she’s off to

to identify Anny Schlemm as the singer.