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Dame Kiri te Kanawa embraces her inner Alexis Morell Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan for this scene from the Handelian pastiche The Sorceress. Despite the film’s 1993 release date, the sensibility is pure ’80s: massive hair, voluminous frock, garish lighting design… and don’t overlook the multitude of smirking supers! (Just so you know, the aria is…
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Not the newest observation, but perhaps relevant again at the moment. So, tell me, what do these two ladies have in common (besides the family resemblance, of course)? [UPDATE: I’ve traded out the original image of Joyce Castle for something more representative.]
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“Ms. Fleming‘s soprano has gotten bigger and richer since her Dallas debut 15 years ago. ‘I was replacing Carol Vaness in a lot of Mozart repertoire she couldn’t sing anymore,’ Ms. Fleming says of her early years.” You can read more of The Tactful Voice’s audition for the remake of The Women in an interview…
This is why drag was invented. The artistes are James Bondage and Bella ToDyeFor.
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“Opera’s ‘fat lady’ is a Madison cash cow“ In other news: has anyone ever heard Natalie Bancroft sing opera? Ms. Bancroft is the scioness of the family who recently sold their controlling share in Dow Jones (and thus the Wall Street Journal) to Newscorp for a thousand million gazillion pounds or whatever it was. Anyway,…
La Cieca’s DVR hard drive will be overflowing by the end of this November since the indispensable Turner Classic Movies has scheduled a whole month of “guest programmers.” Among the celebrities gracing the tube to introduce their favorite flicks will be some of particular interest to the parterre crowd. For example, this Thursday, November 8,…
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…
“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…
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…
Aided and abetted by Noel Coward, the scintillating Mary Martin crosses over into operatic territory.
Ever since everyone’s favorite apocryphal diva (with the possible minority exception of Lena Geyer), the oracular Oltrano herself, Marwdew Czgowchwz, vanished across the ocean at a time (time out of mind) that was somehow both 1956 and 1975 and yet neither, La Cieca, like all the rest of you, has reread her first copy of…
Ah, yes, of course La Cieca remembers the 1970s, or bits and pieces of it, anyway. Your doyenne fondly recalls that everyone spent that whole decade coked up and ‘luded out, and she’s in no position to condemn anyone. But even the hedonistic, anything-goes ’70s Zeitgeist cannot explain the following video; specifically, why Franco Bonisolli…
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
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