Now, you know La Cieca likes taking a confrontational attitude with operatic authority figures as much as any other gadfly. But she is going to say that this Jeremy Gerard may be carrying the bitch-slapping just a wee bit too far in his current Bloomberg.com screed on the New York City Opera’s year-long hiatus (“City Opera is in dire financial straits and the recent hiring of opera newbie George Steel has hardly brightened the mood of doom” is one of the milder rebukes Gerard delivers.)

Your doyenne is beginning to believe that those conspiracy theories about the malign influence of Manuela Hoelterhoff may not be so far-out after all. Or is there another explanation for Bloomberg’s ferocious attitude toward The Man of Steel?