Park and “Bark”
Taylor Mac isn’t known for being short-winded.
gay gay gay gay gay
Prick and choose
Heartbeat Opera knows how to party.
Cruising
Have you ever gotten some action at the opera? Had an assignation while in standing-room? Crept off to the toilet (or elsewhere) with a handsome man during a performance?
Headlines La Cieca wishes she’d written
“Lafayette’s frothy delivery delights at Kennedy Center” [Washington Post]
Mad about the boy
La Cieca is all for crossover, but… In response to several questions from commenters, La Cieca will say, no, she does not believe that Vitas takes “the” high e-flat. However, there is another genetic male on YouTube who does have the note: Lallanzinho!
Fleming-Bocelli ticket in 2008
The Washington National Opera has announced their 2008-2009 season will feature headliners Renée Fleming and Andrea Bocelli under the artistic direction of Plácido Domingo. According to an article by Our Own Anne Midgette in today’s Washington Post, The Beautiful Voice will grace a new production of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, an opera that has deep personal […]
Circular reasoning
“As implied by the title, this collection probes deeply into Wagner’s vast Ring…. Among the highlights is the revealing chapter on the many characters than Wagner has managed to cram into his Ring. Also covered are the brass instruments that Wagner designed specifically for use within his Ring.” The infelicitous title of this musiciological study […]
Fan male
This video indicates some of the underlying reasons for the recent shocking increase in acts of violence against character tenors.
Too many sources!
“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 […]
Love has a bitter core, Vanessa
Oh, all right, La Cieca admits it, this is not a photo from a production of Vanessa. She will say, though, that this is what a production of Vanessa should look like, and hold the scrim trees. In fact, this is a scene from Lyric Opera of Chicago‘s new Die Frau ohne Schatten, which by […]
JJ and the City
“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 […]
The work wasn’t the only thing that was hard
“Samuel Barber . . . for decades remained Menotti‘s closest friend and most trusted colleague. Having first met when they were teenagers studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, the two men established an enduring friendship and shared homes . . . where they lived as hard-working artists and professional composers.” Oh brother! […]
Tales of the Pearl Necklace
“1,000 faces and ten years of Kumm at the National Opera” is the intriguing headline of what disappointingly turns out to be a review of a rock concert. And La Cieca was so sure this was in some way connected with the impending prima of the Krzysztof Warlikowski production of Yevgeny Onegin.
Name that Regie!
Well, no, Charles Wuorinen has not finished his Brokeback Mountain opera quite yet. In fact, this photo is from a new staging of a standard repertory work. Can you identify it? (Guesses only, please — if you know this production, please recuse yourself!) Click to enlarge.
When I started stripping they hollered "put it on!"
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 […]
Pop-top frocks
New York-based artist Nikos Floros has created an artistic tribute to La Divina herself from 20 thousand beer and soft drink cans for an art exhibition in Athens. The exhibition includes a sculptural gown inspired by Maria Callas’s costume for Iphigénie en Tauride featuring ring-pulls that become a lace-like collar. A kimono sculpture is inspired […]
The names he used to call me!
Aided and abetted by Noel Coward, the scintillating Mary Martin crosses over into operatic territory.
Bendel bonnet, Shakespeare sonnet, Mickey Mouse
Maury D’annato: “Isn’t there probably some sort of unspoken crypto-paleo-musico-semantic rule governing that baritone=top and tenor=bottom?”
Gayest thing ever … then and now
Neither is opera-related, but La Cieca just can’t help herself. Nothing really changes.
camp, Critics and Their Criticism, Diva, festoonery, gay gay gay gay gay, this diva looks like that diva
I laughed for art, I laughed for love
“This writer approached the new off-Broadway play The Second Tosca with more than a bit of trepidation, worried that it might amount to no more than second-rate Terrance McNally or, even worse, unfunny inanity like Lend Me a Tenor. What a relief, then, it is to report that The Second Tosca is a delightful, campy, […]
Morris is less
“No one could doubt the sincerity of Mark Morris‘ admiration for the late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who was to have collaborated with him on the Metropolitan Opera’s new staging of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. However, the opening night performance of this production (May 2) did not convince me that the choreographer can channel this […]
camp, Critics and Their Criticism, Diva, drag, Filth, gay gay gay gay gay, la cieca ci guarda, our own, Video
Semi-ubiquitous
Our editor JJ‘s busy week included a review of the Met’s Aegyptische Helena in Gay City News, and that panel La Cieca has been yammering about all week. As his presentation on the topic “Opera and Technology,” JJ introduced this little documentary about your own La Cieca.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
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!
I’ll take the fall
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).
