We’ll be right back after this
La Cieca, appearing live on tape, extends her thanks to parterre’s advertisers for the month of July.
Questo e Quello
Queen for a day
As soon as you are finished celebrating the gay pride of yourself and/or others, cher public, feel free to comment here on matters off-topic and general.
O brother, wired art thou?
Shocker of the century! The New York Times reveals that Met singers are miked!
Lèse majesté
Dame Gwyneth Jones is fighting an attempt to oust her as president of the Wagner Society, a position she has held for 23 years.
Statue of limitations
Our weekly canard concerns that greatest of all operas, Don Giovanni—or is it?
Semi tough
Here’s Jonas Kaufmann last night in Munich, singing Manrico’s scena from Trovatore
She sang a mouthful
Soprano Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs sings the final scene from Salome in the Stefan Herheim production for Den Norske Opera.
Between the conception and the creation between the emotion and the response
So finally we can see what the Robert Lepage Ring would have looked like if only the Machine hadn’t been totally fucked.
The world on a string: talking to Jamie Barton
American mezzo Jamie Barton, who has steadily been winning fans in the US over the past few years for her rich and nuanced singing, took the international opera world by storm last weekend by winning both the Song Prize as well as the overall prize in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
Springtime for Wagner
Could Marek Janowski do for Wagner what the early music movement did for the Baroque and Classical repertory?
By Adriel
9 comments
The new world
Name a Verdi opera, based on a play by Voltaire, described in the immortal words of the composer as “Questo e proprio brutto.”
Tuesdays with Mary
Miss Garden smiled. “You probably have never seen a thin Violetta,” she exclaimed. “You’ll find that that will make a difference.”
Counterpoint
Maesto Lorin Maazel (pictured) responds to La Cieca.
Don’t bother with an intermission feature, take this direct!
As day breaks over the murder house, La Cieca, famed doyenne of yesteryear, invites the cher public to discuss off-topic and general interest subjects.
Female on the beach
Christian Thielemann has proved himself to be the preeminent Strauss interpreter of the current generation of conductors and he’s in striking form here.
One of three
When I acquire DVDs of opera performances, I look for performances which truly merit a video recording; performances in which the totality of the musical and dramatic elements are worth preserving for repeated viewing.
All boulevards lead to Westchester
“Let’s go up to Westchester!”
Magrets de canard
For our weekly meander through mendacity, we turn to no less than Gotham Chamber Opera’s own Neal Goren, who writes, “People repeat as fact that women ruin their voices, or at least sacrifice their high notes, by singing in chest voice. So untrue!”
Busting out
June Anderson will make the transition into the “Anne Revere” segment of her career next summer when she sings the role of Elvira Griffiths in Tobias Picker‘s An American Tragedy at the Glimmerglass Festival.
To the Emerald City, as fast as lightning!
Aidan Lang has been named Seattle Opera’s third General Director effective September 1, 2014.
Fleur du mal
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the repentant Puritan—that is, he repented that his family had once been Puritans—describes the voice of Rappaccini’s Daughter, Beatrice, as “rich as a tropical sunset, … which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable.”
Teen queen
Handel’s first surviving musical composition is Almira, the opera he wrote in a hurry when shake-ups at the Hamburg opera house, where the 19-year-old had been playing in the violin section, left a planned production unfinished.
Clichés Grip City
La Cieca supposes she shouldn’t complain: the more time Lorin Maazel spends on Facebook, the less time he spends conducting Don Carlo.
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).