Le jazz tiède
The crossover album: a hint that that an artist has either exhausted all the repertory at her command and owes her record label a new release or that her waning vocal resources really shouldn’t be taxed much further than an octave.
Questo e Quello
Worth saying
Let’s get the new year started off right, cher public, with a tasteful, well-mannered discussion of off-topic and general interest subjects.
Red letter day
The Cologne Opera Fledermaus, announced as a concert performance turned out to be a much livelier and funnier affair than expected. Thanks to the excellent direction of the singers, the beautiful costumes, an unusually sparkling ensemble composed of great local favorites, and star singers for the two lead roles, this was as joyful and exciting a performance as any fully staged version.
Orpheus goes downtown
Marc-Antoine Charpentier came along at the wrong time for a composer of French opera.
Precious snowflake
Bundle up warmly, cher public, and enjoy a weather-appropriate selection from the Mike Richter hoard.
Game theory
I first became aware of the work of Austrian film director Michael Haneke a few years back when I followed a tip from a friend and rented the well-reviewed The White Ribbon.
Ogni Cura
“Ogni Cura si doni al diletto / E s’accorra nel magico petto,” the joke went back in the late ’90s. What wags we were!
You were revived, you know
The merits of Candide—Leonard Bernstein‘s musically glimmering yet dramatically awkward comic operetta based on Voltaire’s novella – are on ravishing display at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
Fans de siècle
As if listening live to tonight’s gala Met premiere of Die Fledermaus were not frivolity sufficient unto the end of the calendar year, La Cieca and Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin (pictured above, in no particular order) offer an alternative version of Strauss’s operetta for your amusement.
With one look
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2014-2015 season will consist of Tannhäuser, The Passenger, Tosca, Porgy and Bess, Il Trovatore, Anna Bolena, Capriccio and Don Giovanni.
Bat mitzvah?
“They have a menorah and a Christmas tree,” he said, alluding to their assimilated status.
Ancien regie
“But like any production left out in the sun a few decades, it gradually faded into mere decoration.”
Blessings counted
Golden oldie
Eight hundred years ago, the “youth of Beauvais” in the north of France created a sacred festival “play,” Ludus Danieli (ludus—meaning a sacred event? a performance? a game? a joke?) for the annual Fool’s Night on January 1 at the cathedral.
Critical care
The experience of watching Wagner’s final opera Parsifal is frequently elevated to a spiritual occurrence, and productions have historically emphasized the religious dimension of the opera’s core themes of redemption and the dangers of temptation.
Glyph you hadn’t, but you did
f you like opera to look like a museum, the Arena di Verona’s latest video of Aida should jump to the top of your wish list.
Bowled over
I never thought I’d see the day when Giuseppe Verdi and Benjamin Britten would battle it out for musical superiority but that’s exactly what happened in Los Angeles this year.
The allegory of the Currentzis
“The often black-clad 41-year-old, described as the ‘Nick Cave of classical’…”
“You call that a trill?”
La Cieca invites the cher public to engage in lively but non-violent discourse on off-topic and general interest subjects.
The pain in Spain
Just a reminder, cher public, that the live webcast of La forza del destino from the Bayerische Staatsoper is at noon on Saturday, with concurrent chat at La Casa della Cieca.
The tutti frutti canard
“An opera production should look the way the music sounds.” — Lady Valerie Solti
Marta Eggerth, 1912-2013
Operetta and film star Marta Eggerth died yesterday in New York. She was 101.
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).