diva
Autumn in New York means many things to many people. To some, it’s glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel; others reflect upon upon jaded roués and gay divorcées who lunch at the Ritz. To singers it’s the height of the allergy and cancellation season. But to us, the most echt of all…
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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…
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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
Only rarely can a writer inspire first violent agreement and then equally fervent disbelief in the space of a couple of short paragraphs, but Kyle MacMillan of the Denver Post can now claim credit for La Cieca’s current bipolarity: Renée Fleming just might be the the world’s most undivalike diva. [well, duh!]Much like, say, Audrey…
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La Cieca wasn’t “in the house” for the Lucia prima last night like so many of her colleagues; instead she hosted perhaps the most popular of all her online chats thus far. Approximately 120 of you cher public logged in at some point during the night, with 75 or so on average staying for the…
“Jossie is a wild girl,” says a former MetOpera colleague. “You never knew what gutter you’d wake up in when you went out with her.” …. As her career began to escalate, so did, by many accounts, her outlandish party lifestyle and behavior. Like Carmen, Pérez moved fluidly from man to man, boasting to colleagues…
Multifaceted Aprile Millo has branched out into blogging, and her site, operavision, includes some of the smartest online opera commentary La Cieca has seen. Currently she’s expounding on Opera in 3D, a fascinating article if you can tear yourself away from the image of Renata Tebaldi shaking hands with an astronaut! La Millo naturally has…
Fans of red-haired three-named sopranos d’un certain âge will rejoice to hear that at least a couple of the mainstays of the Volpe Era have been asked back to the Met under the Gelb Aegis. (And after all that naughty gossip about firings and buyings-out! Who ever heard of such a thing?) Anyway, not to…
Yes, another YouTube posting, but this one is something very special indeed. Legendary Zarah Leander is seen in a few moments from her 1975 triumph as Madame Armfelt in Das Lächeln einer Sommernacht (A Little Night Music) at the Theater an der Wien. La Leander also cavorts about a studio, lipsynching a medley of her…
That utterly addictive web presence Vinyl Divas has just updated their fascinating, wide-ranging collection of operatic LP covers with high-quality scans of albums featuring every opera lady you’ve ever heard of (and more than a few you haven’t.) The latest set runs the gamut from Alla Ablaberdyeva (performing Bach, Purcell and Handel with the assistance…
In fact, the opera is anything but obscure. But the performance has been seen only rarely since 1956.
The delightful and greatly missed Madeline Kahn explains how she almost became an opera singer. The complete version of this 1985 Opera Quiz, also featuring Kitty Carlisle Hart and Charles Nelson Reilly, can be found on Veoh. com.
Nelly Miricioiu sings the second act of Roberto Devereux plus the finale of Rossini’s Ermione in the current episode of Unnatural Acts of Opera. Representing the German wing, Martha Moedl is seen in a rare television appearance, performing Lieder by Wagner and Wolf, discussing her career, and performing a scene from Mahagonny. It’s all at…
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