La Cieca
La Cieca’s old, old, old friend and role model Charles Busch returns to the boards this month in the New York stage premiere of one of his greatest film triumphs, the eponymous matriarch of Die Mommie Die. Busch (who is of course the author as well) stars as Angela Arden, a legendary screen chanteuse bedeviled…
La Cieca hears the good news that Ruth Ann Swenson has recovered well enough from her cancer treatment to jump into a couple of performances of Maria Stuarda at the Opéra de Lyon this past week.
Placido Domingo stars as “himself” in what looks to be a steamy episode of The Simpsons this Sunday, September 30 on Fox. It seems Homer Simpson is tranformed into a tenor after he suffers a freak head injury (in other words, he’s no different from most tenors) and seeks the advice of maestro Domingo. Not…
Only rarely can a writer inspire first violent agreement and then equally fervent disbelief in the space of a couple of short paragraphs, but Kyle MacMillan of the Denver Post can now claim credit for La Cieca’s current bipolarity: Renée Fleming just might be the the world’s most undivalike diva. [well, duh!]Much like, say, Audrey…
La Cieca predicted a cast change earlier, and what do you know, so it came to pass! Soprano Lisette Oropesa will sing the Tuesday prima of the Met’s revival of Le nozze di Figaro and at least one more performance. She is jumping in for the enceinte Isabel Bayrakdarian. Ms. Oropesa is not only a…
The regularly scheduled podcast from Unnatural Acts of Opera will be delayed a bit, not really because of “technical difficulties” but rather because La Cieca is getting herself out of the house for once and attending the opera. Tonight it’s the seconda of the Met’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and your doyenne (squired by Milton Host)…
The stuff you find on YouTube!
According to Rush & Molloy in the Daily News, Annie Proulx has given the go-ahead to an opera based on her story “Brokeback Mountain.” Charles Wuorinen will compose. UPDATE: Now PlaybillArts is confirming the rumor, complete with quotes from Howard Stokar, Charles Wuorinen‘s agent. La Cieca would boast that she called it, but alas that…
Stepdaughter Sieglinde summarizes the critical reaction in blog and print to Stephen Costello‘s Met debut. No surprises here for La Cieca, who observed equivalent ecstasy in real time during her Monday night online chat:
So La Cieca asks: if you’re a guy known as one of opera’s hottest hunks, who better to choose for a romance than an alluring superstar soprano? It’s sure hot when this pair are booked at the same opera house!
Maury D’annato: “Isn’t there probably some sort of unspoken crypto-paleo-musico-semantic rule governing that baritone=top and tenor=bottom?”
There’s more (including a trailer for an upcoming Lego Tosca) on YouTube.
La Cieca wasn’t “in the house” for the Lucia prima last night like so many of her colleagues; instead she hosted perhaps the most popular of all her online chats thus far. Approximately 120 of you cher public logged in at some point during the night, with 75 or so on average staying for the…
Thanks for joining La Cieca for the first online chat of the 2007-2008 season. If you enjoyed the chat, please visit the Amazon Honor System to help support parterre.com.
Struggling downtown artiste Robert Wilson has been rendered homeless since his recent “eviction” from the 6,000 square foot loft he leased since the early 1970s. The space is located in a building on Vestry Street in trendy TriBeCa that’s scheduled for demolition to make way for, what else, luxury condominiums. The bereft avante-gardiste has been…
A Met insider whispers to La Cieca, “Don’t be surprised if there are changes to the current layout of the 2008-2009 season, especially when one soprano, after what she considers a catastrophic rehearsal process, vowed not work with the director again.”
La Cieca’s chat returns Monday night to welcome in the new Met season. Topic of discussion: the evening’s prima of the new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, as broadcast on SIRIUS Internet Radio. Please check back on this site after 5:00 pm Monday for a link to the room, which will open at 6:15 pm…
La Cieca is suffering a mild case of Empty Nest Syndrome this afternoon, since she just found out that parterre.com fave Stephen Costello is all grown up. It turns out that Stephen is the “TBA” who will sing Edgardo (his very first!) in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met on October 25. In this spectacular…
Teddy Tahu Rhodes stars in the first Australian production of Dead Man Walking. To which La Cieca can only respond, “Nathan Who?”
La Cieca’s little bird sang true: yesterday it was announced that James Robinson will be the new Artistic Director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Moving on to another story that you heard first from your doyenne, ze bad-boy of ze opéra Gérard Mortier spilled his plans for his first NYCO season yesterday. In 2009-2010…
That’s a bit of the description of Natalie Dessay‘s Lucia mad scene, as dress-rehearsed at the Met earlier today and reported by La Cieca’s spy. The complete report (including SPOILERS!) follows: I’m sure some people will be up in arms over the production. It is set in the mid-19th century. The costumes are decent. Mariusz…
A full account of “A Tribute to Beverly Sills” may be found at PlaybillArts though, curiously, the “photo journal” (from which this image was yoincked, and which includes a look at la Netrebko’s more tasteful garb) seems to have vanished into the ether.
“Jossie is a wild girl,” says a former MetOpera colleague. “You never knew what gutter you’d wake up in when you went out with her.” …. As her career began to escalate, so did, by many accounts, her outlandish party lifestyle and behavior. Like Carmen, Pérez moved fluidly from man to man, boasting to colleagues…
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.
