La Cieca would like to introduce a new feature to parterre.com in which questions on opera-related etiquette (and probably “life issues” and stuff) sent in by the puzzled, the concerned and, perhaps on occasion, the merely inept. Our first question come to us from “Baffled By the Bay” — I have an opera friend who […]
So, cher public, those of you who are buying tickets for the Met today. What’s the experience like?
George Steel recently gave Anthony Tommasini a sneak peak at his bulging Koch Theater. The Times scribe, “dodging sparks from welders and ducking under hanging cables” soon realized that the “boyish” intendant is just like President Obama, sort of. [NYT]
Naughty Feldmarschallin spoiled the most recent Regie quiz by blurting out the answer, so La Cieca will repeat her usual entreaty in advance this time. The point of this quiz is not to see if you can recognize a production you have seen (or have seen reviewed) but rather, working from the images, to try […]
Our Own JJ reviews A Flowering Tree in today’s New York Post.
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/goFTDbMyRUs” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] The Gran Teatre del Liceu has posted 70 clips from a variety of their opera productions over the last decade or so. Great singing and improbable regie: who could ask for anything more?
La Cieca hears that after two days of negotiations a “tentative agreement” has been reached between AGMA and the New York City Opera. Members of AGMA will vote on August 20 whether they choose to ratify the agreement as the negotiating committee has recommended. According to our source, AGMA has made “some concessions,” though apparently […]
According to Variety, Kate Winslet will star in a remake of Mildred Pierce, to be directed by Todd Haynes. Is this, like, the Hurricane Katrina of gay sensibility, or what? Let’s hope HBO goes for a fuller treatment of the story than the classic 1945 Joan Crawford vehicle, including Veda’s budding career as an opera […]
Which recent cancellation really has nothing to do with the music, and everything to do with the fact that the stars don’t want to play a couple onstage when offstage they will soon be an ex-pair (in the legal sense)?
Classical Beatnik Anne Midgette, obviously still reeling from the experience of The Letter in Santa Fe, addresses a problem we’ve been seeing more and more of in opera: even those who supposedly love the art form, and who are involved in putting it on, are increasingly laboring under the delusion that it is inherently over-the-top, […]
Here’s a glimpse of Marina Poplavskaya in the Willy Decker production of La traviata, coming to the Met in 2010. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/cJSjDBSnnUw” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
Hot hot hot Erwin Schrott is obviously not not not allowing fatherhood and impending marriage to distract him from quality gym time. More photos of the Schrott gun show (as seen recently in the Vienna Volksoper Theater an der Wien production of Don Giovanni) after the jump.
Angela Gheorghiu, not to be outdone by Anna Netrebko‘s cancellation of Violetta in 2010, has just announced that she will not sing Carmen in 2009. According to the Romanian diva’s website, “With deep regret Angela Gheorghiu has to announce that she has to withdraw just from the new production of CARMEN at the MET later […]
La Cieca is proud to “hostess” a classic performance of Semiramide as performed at La Scala on 17 December 1962. Heading the starry cast are Joan Sutherland (Semiramide), Giulietta Simionato (Arsace), Wladimiro Ganzarolli (Assur) and Gianni Raimondi (Idreno). You can listen to the first act on the Unnatural Acts of Opera page.
After the jump is the cover of Cecilia Bartoli‘s new CD, which apparently is all castrato music, all the time. Oh, it hurts!
Now that single tickets are available for purchase by Met season subcribers, and as the NYCO continues to dribble out details about casting, it’s time for La Cieca to start organizing her social diary for the opening of “The Season.” Where will Le Tout New-York be tooting this time around, cher public? Let La Cieca […]
The Royal Opera House, which in its past season glitzed up its programming with such gimmicks as a tabloid tie-in and a mezzo-soprano strapped to a wheelchair, now looks to be getting desperate. The venerable opera company has commisioned a “Twitter Opera,” with a libretto to be gleaned from sundry tweets posted via the popular social […]
La Cieca hears that Angela Meade, triumphant in this summer’s Semiramide at Caramoor, has been invited back there in 2010 for her first Norma. Other future dates include Les Vêpres siciliennes in Vienna and a return engagement at the Met in Ernani. On the bill at Caramoor for 2011: that grandest of all grand operas, […]
Anna Netrebko will not sing Violetta in New York during the 2010-2011 season, La Cieca has learned. The long-expected La traviata (as discussed on Met Futures and elsewhere) was to be a version of the Willy Decker production the soprano did at Salzburg in 2005. According to an interview the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Netrebko has […]
Cher public, you may be interested or alarmed (as the case may be) to glean a little more information about the namesake of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, home to, among others, the New York City Opera. Mr. Koch is chairman of the board of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which finances […]
This is someone we need to hear more of. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/lOraQt705FY” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
In the wake of a New York Times exposé of Milwaukee’s Skylight Opera Theatre’s welter of “demonstrations, petitions, mass resignations of performers, subscriber revolt and Facebook vitriol interpreted by management as violent threats,” Playbill News reports this morning that Eric Dillner, the “vilified” managing director of the company, has resigned. According to a story this […]
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/zeMMG440Ce0″ width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
La Cieca has just heard the shocking, shocking! news that Margaret Juntwait will step down as host on Metropolitan Opera Radio.
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
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