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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
Which world-class maestro is about ready to throw himself off of the roof since he accidentally cced a private email exchange to his entire list of contacts — including Mrs. Maestro? The exchange was eventually forwarded to La Cieca, who redacted some of the details for the sake of privacy, and now presents it for…
In her ongoing efforts to monetize parterre.com, La Cieca has now partnered in a new and unusual way… with amazon.com, that is. The idea is that your doyenne selects products she thinks you, the cher public, will like; these items are then advertised on the site. Whatever purchases you make after click-through will result in…
La Cieca predicted a cast change earlier, and what do you know, so it came to pass! Soprano Lisette Oropesa will sing the Tuesday prima of the Met’s revival of Le nozze di Figaro and at least one more performance. She is jumping in for the enceinte Isabel Bayrakdarian. Ms. Oropesa is not only a…
So La Cieca asks: if you’re a guy known as one of opera’s hottest hunks, who better to choose for a romance than an alluring superstar soprano? It’s sure hot when this pair are booked at the same opera house!
A Met insider whispers to La Cieca, “Don’t be surprised if there are changes to the current layout of the 2008-2009 season, especially when one soprano, after what she considers a catastrophic rehearsal process, vowed not work with the director again.”
La Cieca is suffering a mild case of Empty Nest Syndrome this afternoon, since she just found out that parterre.com fave Stephen Costello is all grown up. It turns out that Stephen is the “TBA” who will sing Edgardo (his very first!) in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met on October 25. In this spectacular…
La Cieca’s little bird sang true: yesterday it was announced that James Robinson will be the new Artistic Director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Moving on to another story that you heard first from your doyenne, ze bad-boy of ze opéra Gérard Mortier spilled his plans for his first NYCO season yesterday. In 2009-2010…
That’s a bit of the description of Natalie Dessay‘s Lucia mad scene, as dress-rehearsed at the Met earlier today and reported by La Cieca’s spy. The complete report (including SPOILERS!) follows: I’m sure some people will be up in arms over the production. It is set in the mid-19th century. The costumes are decent. Mariusz…
Expect yet another major cast change at the Met in the next couple of weeks. La Cieca won’t spill the details at the moment, but let’s just say that the problem is a soprano who got knocked up before the marriage!
The Met’s star-crossed revival of Roméo et Juliette has just hit another bump. Nathan Gunn, announced for Mercutio, has dropped out of the September and October performances of the opera due to illness. Jumping in will be baryhunque Stéphane Degout, who performed Mercutio in this production back in 2005. Gunn is still on the cast…
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
