here in the US, you can 
Questo e Quello
La Cieca and DeCaffarrelli unanimously hail Trubadur as winner of the “Ladies in the Dark” vocal ID competition.
“An earlier version of this post referred incorrectly to the gender of the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. Ms. Barton is a woman.”
La Cieca has been wining, dining and otherwise wooing her Met connection (pictured above) and he (or is it she?) has come across with some tidbits about upcoming seasons at Casa Gelb.
the strip on my first and, so far at least, only visit to Las Vegas a few years ago, I noticed what to me was a most unexpected sight and startled my companions by pointing out the window and shouting “Auber!”
In a starling last-minute change of programming, the Salzburg Festival has canceled all further performances of the critically-reviled Peter Stein production of Don Carlos. Weltstars Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann will instead perform My Fair Lady (pictured).
“In her first television acting job [Dame Kiri te Kanawa] portrays Dame Nellie Melba, her fellow antipodean soprano, whose purity of voice inspired a peach-based pudding.”
You can imagine what the next few days were like.
“Mary Garden, the famous opera singer who gained particular fame through her rendition of Salome, is to become a nun…”
After the success of its Don Giovanni in 2011, Lincoln Center invited Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra to return for the Mostly Mozart Festival premiere (!) of the first of Mozart-da Ponte’s three masterpieces Le Nozze di Figaro late Sunday afternoon at the Rose Theater.
I was led through a small labyrinth of white curtains, sheer like veils, to a row of seven chairs jutting in between the stage risers.
Take a look around you, cher public, and perhaps find someone in the next box to discuss off-topic and general interest subjects.
“She ducked the high E-flat!”
The front runner in our devilishly difficult “D’amor sull’ali” quiz is Giasone (pictured), with 22 of 30 singers correctly identified.
The American mezzo-soprano, director, filmmaker and teacher Regina Resnik has died.
Well, my dears, if you thought Frank Castorf‘s Ring or Stefan Herheim‘s Meistersinger were outré, then wait until you get a load of the radical take on Don Carlos by Peter Stein for the Salzburg Festival!
“The Met is proud of its history as a creative base for LGBT singers, conductors, directors, designers, and choreographers.”
Wonder no more! Says the Met press office, “Elina Garanca has withdrawn from her 2013-14 Met engagements because she is pregnant with her second child, who is due this winter.”
Leslie Uyeda’s When the Sun Comes Out is being premiered by Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival as “Canada’s first Lesbian opera” at the Roundhouse Community Center in Yaletown. I caught the second performance; there is one more tomorrow night.
I’ve long been a fan of Kenneth Branagh, even though this fandom feels a bit like being a camel in the desert.
Deborah Voigt, “unfortunately ill,” will not sing her first Ortrud this Sunday at the Festival de Lanaudière. According to the festival’s press office, a replacement will be named later today.
La Cieca hears a rumor, currently unconfirmed, that Elina Garanca is pregnant and will cancel her participation in the Met’s new production of Werther this season.
“As one of opera’s most controversial artists, Grace-Melzia Bumbry continues to make headlines.”
La Cieca hears that congratulations are in order to Aleksandra Kurzak and Roberto Alagna, who are expecting their first baby in February.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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