La Cieca
How hot was it yesterday? So hot that New York Grand Opera canceled their Central Park performance of Tosca, that’s how hot it was. Rather ironic, too, because Tosca is specifically set in midsummer in metropolitan Rome, where the climate is comparable to yesterday’s Gotham scorcher. Remember that the next time you see a Tosca…
Nothing more fun on a scorching summer day that a friendly game of “Name that Opera.” Below you’ll find two photographs from a recent production of a familiar opera. Can you name the opera? (Bonus: who’s the director?) (P.S. — no fair “guessing” if you know the answer from having seen the production or reviews…
Our publisher JJ (so recently browned out in Queens) expresses his thoughts on the Lincoln Center Festival’s Grendel in his Gay City News review. La Cieca herself picks up the slack on the podcast desk with her presentation of the second act of Maria Stuarda on Unnatural Acts of Opera. Meanwhile, the endlessly inventive Billyboy…
La Cieca rushes back into blackout-torn Queens, New York to podcast Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, starring Barbara Frittoli and Anna Caterina Antonacci. Unnatural Acts of Opera.
The place: the Metropolitan Opera. The time: October 2008. The event: a cult diva’s return to the Met after a 24-season absence. The hint: what’s my name again?
The mystery is solved, and, as usual, La Cieca predicted it well ahead of the official announcement. Per the Met’s website, David Daniels will sing the four performances of the new Orfeo ed Euridice production in May 2007. David joins a distinguished group of artists who have interpreted the role of Orfeo at the Met,…
Through her usual impeccable and top-secret sources, La Cieca has managed to obtain some obviously bootlegged but fascinating video of the opera Grendel, as performed at the Lincoln Center Festival earlier this week. The video quality is only fair, but clip does depict some of the masterful puppet design by Julie Taymor.
Margaret Hamilton stars in the title role of The Licia Albanese Story. (Actually, that is Margaret Hamilton, but the role is that of an eccentric Texas millionairess who hires a high school band to accompany her performance of the national anthem in the Astrodome. It’s the opening scene of Robert Altman‘s 1970 film Brewster McCloud.…
Among the extra-musical delights in the New York City Opera’s production of Mark Adamo‘s Lysistrata, definitely front and center is baritone James Bobick, who rocks the role of Kinesias. (He is seen pictured with Jennifer Rivera. Try looking a little up and to the right and you’ll see her.) Mr. Bobick next appears at the…
Unnatural Acts of Opera presents a tribute to soprano Anna Moffo, who died Thursday night.
Mezzo-turned-soprano Violeta Urmana will sing her first Norma later this month. She will take on the Bellini heroine in concert form at Dresden’s Semper Oper beginning March 30, according to an article on Playbillarts.com. The good news from Boston is that James Levine “didn’t break anything” when he fell off the stage after a performance…
The performance of Angela Gheorghiu as Violetta has attracted the attention of another Violetta of the present (Anna Netrebko), who will likely be a future interpreter of the role here in New York. And at least one Violetta of a past generation is expected to pay a courtesy call: Virginia Zeani has accepted an invitation…
Mike Richter is at it again, this time producing some very polished DVD presentations of operatic productions that are not available commerically. At only $15 a disc, Image Mogul is practically giving them away. Here’s a clip from one of the more mainstream offerings, a 1978 Don Carlo from La Scala with Placido Domingo and…
Not that La Cieca begrudges Jessye Norman her Grammy Award (she’s pictured celebrating in Tokyo after the ceremonies), but, honestly, what all has La Jess achieved in her lifetime that she should be given a Lifetime Achievement award? Certainly Norman’s has been a very visible and well-publicized career, but when La Cieca talks about a…
Alas, La Cieca can’t comment regarding onstage goings on at last night’s Traviata at the Met (her evil twin JJ is writing about the event for Gay City News), but things were pretty gala in the auditorium as well. Representing the Blogosphere was one of the Wellsungs, Jonathan Ferrantelli, a deux with the always charming…
From an article on Teresa Berganza‘s website, “Teresa Berganza, canto as expression of a style”: She’s got black eyes and a white simile . . . . Her voice, the subduing voice of Teresa Berganza is something like the invocation of a mystery made accomplice to the shinning of her gaze; a voice full of…
“I sang Violetta that year, too! Tony Tommasini said it was the best thing I ever did! They never even broadcast it in the United States! They were too busy giving a big build-up to that crap you were turning out.” Video
The New York Post‘s Clive Barnes is going to blush beet-red when he hears from the publicists (or the lawyers) who handle Placido Domingo. In a review of the Met’s Rigoletto, Barnes refers to PD as “the 72-year-old tenor.” Domingo admits to 65, though some gossips have long sniped that this figure doesn’t add up…
You would think that La Cieca would climb on her very high horse about the elementary school music theater in Colorado who riled up parents by showing the “Who’s Afraid of Opera?” version of Gounod’s Faust to her students. And certainly some of those parents overreacted in the good old American way. (One mom called…
La Cieca hears that last night at the Met (i.e, only a few hours after Angela Gheorghiu‘s dress rehearsal) ushers were handing out complimentary copies of a DVD of La traviata. Starring Anna Netrebko. On a less ominous note, Unnatural Acts of Opera presents Beverly Sills at her most scintillating in a 1970 performance of…
La Cieca’s spy L’incredibile, who has only moments ago slunk home from the Met’s Traviata dress rehearsal, predicts a triumph for Angela Gheorghiu as Violetta. “The most beautiful soprano to sing the role here since Anna Moffo,” L’incredibile exults, though he adds reservations about the carrying power of Gheorgiu’s “veiled” voice and the “frequent disagreements”…
In her never-ceasing quest to give you, the reader, what you want and need, La Cieca has restored the “Google Search” function on parterre.com. With this handy gizmo you can search the entire (blog and non-blog) parterre.com site, or, years from now when you’ve learned all you can learn from La Cieca, you can also…
Leonie Rysanek in film clips spanning 35 years of her career: Die Aegyptische Helena, Der Fliegende Hollaender, Die Walkuere, Salome, Tosca, Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Cavalleria Rusticana, Parsifal, Elektra, and Jenufa. More video.
According to playbillarts.com, Deborah Voigt will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday to discuss weight loss, career and such. UPDATE: the 60 Minutes piece is now online.
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.
