June 2005
Which young Spanish-speaking artiste is going to the “dogs” with her sex, drugs and coloratura lifestyle? You’re not Bolivian, my dear, so lay off the marching powder before you turn into a mess o’ soprano! Which soprano should learn to care more about punctuality at her bel canto rehearsals? Toward her we feel nothing but…
By La Cieca
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The reviews for Apple’s iTunes 4.9 are mixed but the consensus is “thumbs up.” La Cieca downloaded and installed the new version last night; very smooth. The interface with podcasts is something less than lavish, the one part of the application that feels “freeware.” But La Cieca realizes there are a lot of people out…
By La Cieca
The decentralization of the music business is progressing so quickly La Cieca can hardly keep up. (Though it’s not like she’s completely in the loop; as you know, she only recently found out that Giulio Ricordi had died!) The very latest (as of this morning) is that Apple has launched a new build of iTunes…
By La Cieca
“Unnatural Acts of Opera” — that’s what La Cieca is calling her new opera podcast. The “unnatural” in this case has nothing to do with sodomy or lasciviousness, but she’s sure she can hold your interest anyway, with extraordinary opera performances presented one act at a time. (Get it?) La Cieca stessa will offer commentary…
By La Cieca
Catherine Malfitano just doesn’t slow down. In recent seasons she’s expanded her repertoire to include a bewildering variety of roles: Kundry, Minnie, Carmen, Blitzstein’s Regina, Herodias, the Kostelnicka, Elle in La Voix Humaine (that’s her in the picture). She’s taught master classes. She’s performed a cabaret at Joe’s Pub here in New York. And now…
By La Cieca
The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, is using “sexual confusion” to prevent wear and tear on their costume collection: “The traps installed for the Royal Opera House make male clothes moths appear to other males as females, by sticking female pheromones to their bodies. “In a plot that could have come from an opera, males attempt…
By La Cieca
… so says soprano/mentor Renata Scotto, in a charming interview in the NY Times about her singing academy in Westchester. And, of course, there’s a lot more wisdom where that came from. Matthew Gurewitsch is the attentive interviewer. Now Playing at the D.M.V.: Renata Scotto.
By La Cieca
Debuting today on Il Gran Teatro della Cieca, “Femmes Fatales,” a program featuring deadly divas. Featured are complete and demented performances of L’incoronazione di Poppea, Macbeth, Samson et Dalila, Jenufa and Turandot. The lethal lovelies in question are Anna Caterina Antonacci, Shirley Verrett, Oralia Dominguez, Anja Silja and Montserrat Caballe; victims and co-conspirators include David…
By La Cieca
Norman Lebrecht has lost his fucking mind. My second favorite in this rabid rant is how Wieland Wagner (the “competent” stage director) had the middle name “Adolf.” (Wieland was born in 1917, six years before his mother Winifred met the fellow Lebrecht insinuates was his namesake.) The number one brain-fart in the piece is Lebrecht’s…
By La Cieca
Mean, moody, magnificent Mari Lyn has finally (if posthumously) made her debut on DVD, thanks to the equally (if not more so) magnificent Donald Collup. Mme. Lyn, variously called “Hogcolleratura” and “La Traviyenta,” regaled the public access airwaves in the mid-1980s with a series called “The Golden Treasury of Song,” featuring the blond-bewigged “singing hostess”…
By La Cieca
La Cieca hears that performances of Medea featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci this summer at the Chatelet will be taped for eventual DVD release. The production is from Toulouse, where la Antonacci won rapturous reviews for her first incarnation of Cherubini’s antiheroine.
By La Cieca
La Cieca is just asking — why should the Web site of that prominent American baritone suddenly go offline? This artist (recently at the pinnacle of his career) has done musicals before, but this fancy footwork looks like something from Chicago! And which switch-hitting intendant is making noises about quitting his summer job? Is he…
By La Cieca
Even as La Cieca writes this, the evergreen Vera Galupe-Borszkh is preparing to go onstage for her first-ever Duchesse de Krakenthorp in Michigan Opera Theater’s Fille du Regiment. As La Cieca understands it (reports are somewhat sketchy thus far), La Dementia is graciously jumping in at short notice for Shirley Verrett, who has sung(?) the…
By La Cieca
“This week, I’m using Crème de la Mer for my skin, and products from Scott Barnes, the make-up artist who was responsible for J.Lo’s glow. His trio of pink geisha-inspired blushers make my day. I have my hair cut by Vartan Vartali and coloured by Michael Stinchcomb, who’s a fan and travels all round the…
By La Cieca
So La Cieca has been thinking about joining the pod people; that is, she wants to try her hand at podcasting. One idea off the top of La Cieca’s well-coiffed head is something called “Daily Dose of Diva,” a mix of some of my favorite opera recordings and a bit of yakking thrown in. But…
By La Cieca
Well, Mr. Vilar, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that you fell $1 million short of meeting bail and so you’re staying in the slammer. The good news is that your cellmate could be Russell Crowe.
By La Cieca
Those clips from Forza La Cieca posted a couple of weeks ago got her obsessing on Renata Tebaldi, surely one of the healthier obsessions! So La Cieca has launched a new web radio show, “A Tebaldi Festival,” over 10 hours of all-live prime Tebaldi. Featured are complete performances of La forza del destino (Florence, 1953),…
By La Cieca
La Cieca is as puzzled as everyone else about the mysterious disappearance of the DGG DVD of Don Giovanni (Met telecast with Terfel, Fleming, Levine – you know the one). The disc was released on May 10, then only days later DGG recalled it. Now there’s not a copy to be bought anywhere, and early…
By La Cieca
… is one of the milder things the critics called Anna Caterina Antonacci‘s first Medea at Toulouse earlier this month. If Antonacci can live up to even half this praise, I’m going to have to get a tattoo of her on my back! “L’ardente Anna Caterina Antonacci a véritablement fait vibrer les foules toulousaines. Chanteuse…
By La Cieca
