La Cieca
The legendary lady of musical theater and popular song is 80 years old today! Ms. Cook celebrates this milestone next month on November 19 and 20 when she appears as a guest artist with the New York Philharmonic.
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UPDATE: Here’s the “Ernani involami” vocal identification quiz — 20 singers in seven minutes. As of Wednesday night, the two leading entries are tied at 17 correct answers each. Remember, the competition ends at midnight on Friday! La Cieca (not pictured) is practically beside herself (also not pictured) with glee now that she has published…
Latest casting news from the Met: Stephen O’Mara will sing Radamès in Aida on Wednesday, October 24, replacing Marco Berti, who has withdrawn from remaining performances due to illness. The role of the Egyptian captain for the the remaining performances of the season (October 27 – November 8) will be sung by that popular man-about-town…
According to the Guardian Unlimited, the “cash-strapped” government of Greece is scrambling to raise sufficient funds to purchase over $1 million worth of Maria Callas memorabilia at a Sotheby’s auction on December 12. The “voluminous” collection to be auctioned includes “a fabulous array of intimate letters, jewels, evening dresses, furniture, paintings, photographs, unseen stage notes…
Or, “Fleming Subjugates La Scala.” Note the “polite” applause at the end of the performance.
The unsinkable (and apparently unflappable) Birgit Nilsson sings what turns out to be an aria from Verdi’s Macbeth — despite makeup design from Valley of the Dolls and a costume recycled from the “Be Our Guest” number in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. La Nilsson’s performance (as awesome as it is!) is only an opening…
Maury D’annato asks “How high does the Simionato role [in Adriana Lecouvreur] lie? Could Podles do it? Well, judge for yourself. Here’s a clip of mezzo Oralia Dominguez singing the Principessa’s aria “Acerba volutta.”
Which Met diva has just vetoed her renascence as a bel canto grande dame? So daunting a role must have given her cold feet, or at least mistle toe.
La Cieca thanks the visiting Enzo Bordello for pointing out to her some recent updates to the indispensable Met Futures Page so painstakingly maintained by Bradley Wilber. Most of it sound plausible enough, but every now and then a piece of casting leaves La Cieca so stunned she hardly manage to quote a Waldo Lydecker…
Tenor Marcelo Alvarez is seen just after reading a Bloomberg News review of his performance in Luisa Miller at the Verdi Festival in Parma. Was it really all that bad? Well, you decide. Critic James Amott had nothing but praise for Alvarez’s singing, rhapsodizing “Alvarez gave everything, from delicate pianissimo moments to dramatic Italianate wailing.…
Of course, cher public, you heard it about it here a few weeks ago, but La Cieca has just read a press release from the Met announcing that, yes indeed, Roberto Alagna will reprise his Roméo opposite Anna Netrebko on December 12 and 15. (Our Own Gualtier Maldè, as you no doubt recall, confirmed the…
This is what tomorrow looks like: a live opera telecast over the web. It’s France 3’s transmission of a performance of Il Sant’Alessio performed by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, starring “le contre-ténor à la voix d’ange Philippe Jaroussky, tout auréolé de sa Victoire de la musique d’Artiste lyrique de l’année 2007.” Watch it…
La Cieca is nothing if she is not open-minded. So can someone please explain (or at least excuse) the following statement from Bernard Holland in today’s NYT? Verdi has a way of testing his singers at the opening curtain. (See also “La Traviata,” Act I, Scene 1.)
“Over-accessorizing and poor taste in makeup is not an excommunicable offense,” a specialist on Catholic canon law has explained. The expert was speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle in the wake of a scandal involving San Francisco’s Archbishop George Niederauer and the activist group the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. On October 7, Niedarauer delivered the…
Culminating the month-long Maria Callas mania over at Rai 3, this Saturday the Italian radio network will broadcast a newly restored version (“il cui audio verrà restaurato per l’occasione”) of the celebrated June 29, 1955 concert of Bellini’s Norma. Co-starring with La Divina are Mario del Monaco and Ebe Stignani, under the baton of Tullio…
So, was last night a triumph or a disaster? Well, it was neither since the role of Radames doesn’t play to all of Roberto Alagna‘s strengths but it was a very fine showing by a distinctive and sensitive artist in a repertory that isn’t his natural metier. The evening’s biggest triumph was scored by old…
Well, yes there is, and La Cieca apologizes for her recent Manhattancentricity. For example, there’s the Liceu in Barcelona where Fabio Armiliato and Daniela Dessì are tearing the place up in Andrea Chenier. (The video is of the distant single-perspective persuasion, which is okay because the production looks sort of like Starlight Express. But the…
La Cieca has just heard that Roberto Alagna will sing his first Met Radames tomorrow night, replacing the ailing Marco Berti. Which means, if you haven’t guessed it yet, that Marcello Giordani is jumping into tonight’s Butterfly. By the end of the season, Giordani will have five different roles in his Met repertoire for 2007-08:…
Prolific pundit Alex Ross is at it again. The cropped-headed critic’s latest New Yorker piece is all about The Well-Tempered Web. (And pity poor La Cieca, who in the wake of all the Alex-related news of late, has had to force herself not ever to use the headline “Call Her Miss Ross.”)
One of La Cieca’s pet peeves (and you know she has so many she has to keep them organized with a spreadsheet), well, anyway, one of La Cieca’s pet peeves is that operatic orgies so rarely bear even the vaguest resemblance to orgies in real life. Why, just last week, La Cieca was viewing the…
New York-based artist Nikos Floros has created an artistic tribute to La Divina herself from 20 thousand beer and soft drink cans for an art exhibition in Athens. The exhibition includes a sculptural gown inspired by Maria Callas’s costume for Iphigénie en Tauride featuring ring-pulls that become a lace-like collar. A kimono sculpture is inspired…
Missed the Met’s cattlecall for War and Peace supers? Don’t worry! All the really cool kids are going to Toronto to be extras in the opera house sequence of Repo! The Genetic Opera, lensing this week. According to the myspace site of director Darren Lynn Bousman (auteur of Saw II), the production is looking for…
“If Marilyn Monroe was the 1950’s’ blond bombshell, Grace Kelly was the era’s tenor sex — sleek, sophisticated and above all, cool.” — New York Post
“The Metropolitan Opera’s opening week offered two super-starry nights that more than offset a misfired new production across the plaza at the New York City Opera.” After some rather frustrating technical delays, our JJ‘s reviews of the Met’s Roméo and Lucia, plus the NYCO’s Cav/Pag, are at last online at Gay City News. (Perhaps at…
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