La Cieca
James Jorden (who wrote under the names "La Cieca" and "Our Own JJ") was the founder and editor of parterre box. During his 20 year career as an opera critic he wrote for the New York Times, Opera, Gay City News, Opera Now, Musical America and the New York Post. He also raised his voice in punditry on National Public Radio. From time to time he directed opera, including three unsuccessful productions of Don Giovanni. He also contributed a regular column on opera for the New York Observer. James died in October 2023.
Live webcast from Salzburg, right now: the 1912 Ariadne/Le bourgeois gentilhomme.
Chatter away, cher public, for here is your foyer for off-topic and general interest discussion during the week of August 5.
With the country mired in a recession and the Met carrying a heavy load of debt, what better publicity can there be than a sycophantic profile in the Wall Street Journal featuring Peter Gelb snarfing up an $800 bottle of “explosively rich” wine?
Attention K-Mart shoppers!
In what surely counts as the most startling sleeper story of the week in opera, soprano Patricia Racette has been canonized a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church.
For whatever reason (Lack of James Levine? Incompetence of Robert LePage? The economy? Wagner overload?), next season’s Ring cycle at the Met doesn’t seem to be selling.
Soprano, television personality and fundraiser Marguerite Piazza died yesterday.
The Robert Lepage production of the Ring cycle will be shown complete (including the now de rigueur fifth part of the pentalogy, Wagner’s Dream) September 11-14 on PBS
“I have learned by the perfectest report they have more in them than mortal knowledge.”
Sometimes an obscure opera is revived, and everyone hails a lost masterpiece.
Which Met diva will sing two numbers “down a minor second” in her performances during the 2012-13 season?
You may recall a couple of weeks ago La Cieca spoke to Giuseppe Filianoti about the “lost” aria from Cilea’s L’arlesiana he had reconstructed to include in a concert performance of the opera.
As Leon Botstein has never said, “I digress.” La Cieca invites you too, cher public, to digress here in your weekly intermission feature.
Alexandra Deshorties will perform the key role of Juliana Bordereau in the Dallas Opera’s 25th anniversary production of Dominick Argento’s The Aspern Papers.
Scoring the Fire and Music contest was tricky, cher public, as the selections were both quite brief and relatively obscure.
Zachary Woolfe (not pictured) makes his way to Bayreuth to try to unravel the Evgeny Nikitin mystery.
The opening performance of the already-notorious 2012 Bayreuth Festival, Der Fliegende Holländer, begins at noon today EDT and is relayed on a number of web-available radio stations.
In a startling move sure to dominate the news cycle, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney has tapped bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin as his running mate in the 2012 Presidential race.
Talk amongst yourselves, cher public.
Evgeny Nikitin has withdrawn from the Bayreuth Festival’s new production of Der Fliegende Holländer after a German television program revealed the bass-baritone has a swastika tattoo.
“Scientist, lover, gambler, unwed mother — the 1700s French intellectual Émilie du Châtelet was all these and more.”
Says Betsy Ann Bobolink: “Today’s Chat Check is especially for the losers among us, those who fail at all the quizzes and games set before us.”
Well, that was one race that was won at a walk.
Renée Fleming, “who’s been known to kid her diva image, along with her art form”…
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
