critics and their criticism
“Seattle Opera did more than put an intermission between the two scenes. It restored, or opened, to use opera terminology, customary cuts in the score and invented a dream sequence to open Act 2, using music written by Leoncavallo but not for Pagliacci. Two mimes, Comedy, in white, and Tragedy, in black, open the opera…
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“Directed by Francesca Zambello, this Little Mermaid burdens its performers with ungainly guess-what-I-am costumes (by Tatiana Noginova) and a distracting set (by George Tsypin) awash in pastels gone sour and unidentifiable giant tchotchkes that suggest a Luau Lounge whipped up by an acid-head heiress in the 1960s. The whole enterprise is soaked in that sparkly…
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“Stephanie Blythe, superlative in both voice and Wagnerian bitchery as the righteous Erda…” (Clive Barnes‘ review of Die Walküre, NY Post) “I wouldn’t pay any attention to that. You know how bitchy Walas can be!”
The newest member of the gaggle of Gay City News opera critic, Eli Jacobson, critiques recent NYC performances by Opera Grattacielo and Collegiate Chorale.
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Another review (this one only 340 words) of War and Peace. Martin Bernheimer writing for the Financial Times:
When a monumental 20th century masterpiece is revived at the Met, who better to review it than Anthony Tommasini? Today the Times published TT’s critique of War and Peace, a compact screed of exactly 799 words. And how, you may ask, were those words distributed? Well almost half the review (351 words) was given over…
A helpful reader has pointed La Cieca to an interview in the current Opera News, a publication she picks up all too infrequently, alas. But the chitchat between Brian Kellow and Francesca Zambello is just too delicious to ignore. Ms. Zambello is the director of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, a show that just last week…
“… Netrebko is the larger presence. She has an earthiness and impishness — a daredeviltry — that may prevent her from ever attaining the kind of rarefied, disembodied sainthood that has been awarded, for example, to the American sopranos Renée Fleming and Dawn Upshaw but that also makes her more fun to watch.” Charles McGrath…
“My theory: Composers who ignore significant parts of their being – nationality included – cut their creativity off at the knees. Barber was being derivative in self-defeating ways out of deference to the operatic genre. Bernstein, in comparison, was out to tell important stories using the most effective means possible…” David Patrick Stearns adds his…
“Ye Gods! In all the annals, can there be an opera containing more unmitigated codswallop than Erich Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane (‘The Miracle of Heliane’)?” Their Own Rupert Christiansen continues: Dreadfully overheated and over-loud, the prolix first act has a slavering and maudlin sensuality that gave me the creeps …. [T]he rapturous sublimity that…
“Soprano Lauren Flanigan turned her vaunted acting skills to the task of portraying the sophisticated allure of Vanessa, hampered more than a little by a stiff auburn wig and dowdy costumes that left her looking like Nellie Oleson’s mother. Happily, on November 8, Flanigan was in superb voice, sailing fearlessly up to fiery high B’s…
La Cieca was just wondering about something yesterday on opera-l, and doggone if Anne Midgette wasn’t wondering about the same thing today in the New York Times. (That woman haunts my dreams, I tell you. It’s like she’s inside my head. Now, where was I? Oh, yes…) The point that dear Anne and I (among…
Washington Post classical music critic Tim Page ripped DC Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry in a widely-distributed company email recently, calling Barry a “crack head” and “useless.” The trouble began with an email from Barry’s Communication staff that went out as a “blast” to several dozen reporters and media organizations. Page received a copy…
La Cieca’s spiritual godmother Tessi Tura (or, more accurately, Ms. Tura’s alter ego George Heymont) has finally emerged from a “retirement” of over a decade. George has turned to the blog format to complete a project he’s had on the back burner since 1990 or so, “a murder mystery set at the Metropolitan Opera House.”…
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