la cieca ci guarda
As La Cieca’s clever public guessed six weeks ago, Renée Fleming is not going to sing Norma. “The part just didn’t fit as she had hoped it would after living with it,” Fleming publicist Mary Lou Falcone said Thursday to the Associated Press. La Fleming, 48 (though she doesn’t look a day over 20, does…
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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…
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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…
Charles MacKay will become The Santa Fe Opera’s General Director beginning October 1, 2008. MacKay, currently General Director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, succeeds Richard Gaddes, who is retiring. MacKay comes to Santa Fe after 23 years in St. Louis, where he followed Gaddes as that company’s general director. More details on the appointment…
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La Cieca hears that Andrea Bocelli dropped by the Met yesterday to audition for Peter Gelb. The accompanist, on dit, was none other than James Levine!
One of La Cieca’s intricate network of spies has been keeping his ear to the ground in San Francisco where a supernumerary friend whispered to him that “there was concern amongst the SFO backstage ranks that since La Gheorghiu had yet to show up for any La rondine rehearsals, that she may go the route…
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Writes a spy: Today at the final dress, it was pretty obvious why Reneeeeee would cancel her Normas – the “Sempre libera” was SCARY bad – completely off the voice for the mewing and really sloppy coloratura, and then she had to go back on-voice to try and get to the Bb/B/C/Db area. The repeated…
Adept arbiter Anne Midgette has announced her farewell to The New York Times, moving on up to the Washington Post where she will reign as interim chief critic beginning January 1. The WaPo‘s current chief critic, Tim Page, is off to teach a semester at USC and, who knows, may extend his stay in academe…
Which Met diva has just vetoed her renascence as a bel canto grande dame? So daunting a role must have given her cold feet, or at least mistle toe.
Of course, cher public, you heard it about it here a few weeks ago, but La Cieca has just read a press release from the Met announcing that, yes indeed, Roberto Alagna will reprise his Roméo opposite Anna Netrebko on December 12 and 15. (Our Own Gualtier Maldè, as you no doubt recall, confirmed the…
La Cieca is pleased to note that her little soupçon about the maestro’s errant email has now made it as far as the New York Daily News. True, it’s way down at the bottom of the Gatecrasher page (“Don’t Shoot the Messenger”), but, after all, classical music isn’t exactly “Pedro and Stifler want to par-tay…
La Cieca only knows what she has heard so far on Sirius (i.e., through “Che tua madre”), but, my dears, Patricia Racette is such an improvement over last season’s Butterfly! Your doyenne will definitely make another visit to Minghella-land this season. So, who caught the prima in the house? What’s your take? And, those of…
Admittedly, this item is ancient history, but here goes. Which curious, sexed-up Met hunks invaded a star dressing room and immediately got their original instruments a whole lot closer than an octave apart?
La Cieca has just heard that Marcello Giordani goes on tonight (i.e., two hours from now) as Roméo at the Met, jumping in for Joseph Kaiser who presumably is ill. That brings the total number of lovers for Anna Netrebko‘s Juliette to three after only four nights of the 10-performance run. By the end of…
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Win tickets to Piotr Beczala at Carnegie Hall!
pb—with our friends at Carnegie Hall—is giving away two tickets to PB’s December concert. Enter now!
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