Are you ready for a competition, cher public? Well, get ready to don your lexicographer’s caps, because this one is all about the words. Your challenge: create a new word to fit each of the two definitions La Cieca will supply. Both these definitions are descriptions of situations very familiar to operagoers, and so your task is to come up with handy new words we can use in our everyday discourse. (An earlier example of such a useful coined expression is “barihunk.”)
So, our two definitions.
A. “The opposite of a claque; a group or cabal of audience members who arrive at the theater predisposed to dislike what they are about to see or hear, and eager to express their displeasure.”
Used in a sentence: “I must say the ______ were out in full force for the opening night of the new Mary Zimmerman Norma.”
B. “A style of production in which opera singers are required to schlep set pieces, dress people onstage, pretend to be scenery, and otherwise do things that are not ordinarily part of the AGMA job description.”
Used in a sentence: “The production dredged a new nadir of _________ when Susanna started playing the horn part in ‘Aprite un po’ quegli occhi’.”
Details of how the competition works:
Leave a comment below with your two newly-minted words. If you like, you may also include a brief rationale for each neologism.
Entries will be accepted through Friday Feb. 12 at midnight.
An independent panel of parterre.com experts will then decide upon the winner, who will be awarded a deluxe gift package including the recent Met releases of Thaïs and La Cenerentola and the Hilary Hahn Violin and Voice CD.
Please note that La Cieca reserves the right to exercise her notorious “whims of iron” in this as in all other matters.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
