diva
A near-full house attended the Jessye Norman Memorial Celebration at the Met on Sunday afternoon, the auditorium packed with family, friends, colleagues, and fans of the late soprano, who passed away on September 30 of this year.
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The film of that awful play Master Class will begin lensing next week in Detroit. Faye Dunaway directs and stars as Maria Callas. [Detroit Free Press] UPDATE: Edited to include this much funnier photo suggesting La Dunaway has decided to play the Audra McDonald part.
By La Cieca
La DiDonato is joined here by Gabriele Fontana and Eric Cutler in this 2005 video.
By La Cieca
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UPDATED: Now with even more operatic tackiness! A sampling of Diva Dress Disasters submitted by the cher public.Seen worse disasters? Email La Cieca!
By La Cieca
For those of you who were stumped by Lady Number Six, here’s the mysterious dame herself, Galina Vishnevskaya, in a more accustomed version of Lady Macbeth, the 1966 film by Mikhail Shapiro of Katerina Izmailova. The great diva returned to the screen only last year in Alexandra (directed by Alexander Sokurov), playing an elderly woman…
By La Cieca
The unusual and undreamed-of videos just keep popping up on YouTube. Here’s a scene from Norma with Elinor Ross and Mario del Monaco!
By La Cieca
Not a whole lot of news on matters operatic in the past couple of days, so La Cieca has decided a competitive quiz is in order. The clip below is the “Sleepwalking Scene” from Verdi’s Macbeth divided among 14 sopranos and mezzo-sopranos. All you have to do is name the 14 singers in the correct…
By La Cieca
The inimitable, irrepressible Miss Tallulah Bankhead once more graces the studio of Unnatural Acts of Opera with a guest appearance on Apocryphal Opera Anecdote Theater. The legendary stage star joins Our Own La Cieca and Miss Cratchitt to perform a pair of scenes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The main event, of course, is the second and…
By La Cieca
“Believe you me, there is a lot of drama in the opera world, and you have to rise above it …. I really don’t get into the drama. … I don’t cause scandals and I don’t throw fits. For me, the thing to be admired is to be on time, be prepared and to give…
By La Cieca
That grand old man of music André Previn is writing another opera, following up on the clamorous success of 1998’s A Streetcar Named Desire. The commission for Houston Grand Opera is Brief Encounter, based on Noel Coward’s one-act play Still Life as well as the screenplay for the eponymous film. (First Tennessee Williams, then Noel…
By La Cieca
La Cieca is happy to announce a special performance to mark the return from exile of Unnatural Acts of Opera. Our program is a reprise of the first opera ever podcast on this site, Verdi’s Macbeth featuring Shirley Verrett and Piero Cappuccilli. Claudio Abbado conducts the orchestra and chorus of La Scala on December 7,…
By La Cieca
