As perhaps you know, if there’s anyone Norman Lebrecht hates more than opera singers and superstar conductors, it’s artists’ managers. So imagine his glee when he got his mitts on an email “leaked… in the dark of night” detailing “the balance of terror that prevails between a soloist and the person who supposedly has his or her best interests at heart…. the stuff of nightmares.” 

La Cieca doesn’t know the details of this obviously cataclysmic artist-management breakup, but to tell the truth, the email doesn’t sound all that harsh to her. Firm, yes, but we are, after all, talking about a singer who is trying to break a contract. Now, as to the identity of that beleaguered songbird, she will leave that as an exercise for the hive mind of the cher public, with the assistance of the rosters of Universal Music Classical Management and Production and Deutsche Grammophon.