Opera queen
Now that the cold war thriller The Manchurian Candidate is on track to become an opera, La Cieca naturally will turn to you, the cher public, for casting advice for the upcoming opus.
Questo e Quello
Sachs appeal
Opera’s Scottish enfant terrible David McVicar has applied his considerable skills in this 2011 Glyndebourne production of Die Meistersinger, the result being a refreshing new take on a familiar warhorse.
Down for the count
The battle of the sexes ended in an upset the other night in Le Nozze di Figaro.
The man behind the mask
Recently your doyenne engaged in an email-based interview with David Alden, director of the Met’s new production of Un ballo in maschera, opening on Thursday.
The long dark intermission feature of the soul
As we fall back to standard time, La Cieca invites to to while away all those hours of darkness with discussion of off-topic and general interest subjects.
So shines a good chat
We need a ray of Light in these dark times.
Anna macchia è qui tuttora
It’s confirmed!
Shipshape
Italo Montemezzi’s La Nave, premiered in 1918 and not performed anywhere since 1938, concerns itself with nautical power, male and female archetypes, love and hate conjoined, sex and death, the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire — and the visionary future of Old Venice.
Once in half a lifetime
Then and now: the “Dio ti giocondi, o sposo” duet from Otello.
Whose regie? Our regie!
Oh, those Alps (“Loved her, hated him!”) have done it again, or at least for the first time.
E “La Nave” va
La Cieca has just heard that Teatro Grattacielo’s performance of Montemezzi’s La Nave has been rescheduled and confirmed for Wednesday October 31 at 8:00 PM at the Rose Theater.
The blood of a poet
Death and its terrible aftermath hang like a pestilent fog over director Stefan Herheim’s fascinating and chilling production of Puccini’s La Bohème for Den Norske Opera.
Rare opera well done
“When the cross-dressing dude is the gifted singer Jeffery Roberson, and the opera is Menotti’s spellbinding The Medium, the result is prime musical melodrama.”
The little people
As an opera, La Traviata is defined by its characters.
A dude? Am I a dude? Madame Flora, a dude?
It’s just not true that Gian Carlo Menotti composed The Medium as an opera only because he couldn’t get Joan Crawford to do it when his libretto was originally a screenplay.
Can this “Marriage” be saved?
The performance at the Metropolitan Opera last night proved that yes, it is possible to kill this opera. I don’t know how they managed it, but they did.
Parma violence
This DVD of Ernani is part of a series from the Teatro di Parma, a “Tutto Verdi” collection recently produced by Unitel Classica.
One thousand four
My mother asked me once, whilst staring aghast at my CD collection, why I needed so many copies of Don Giovanni.
Scent of mystery
Which Met prima donna whacked the leading man over the head with her score after he had the… what’s the word?… audacity to wear cologne to a rehearsal of their one scene together?
Mission statement
Can it be nearly a quarter-century ago that an Italian mezzo-soprano in her early twenties recorded her first recital?
Reflections in a golden regie
Our Own Ercole Farnese demonstrated that his brain is as well-developed as his trapezoids by guessing, quickly and accurately, that last week’s Regie Quiz depicted Rienzi.
Isle, be seeing you
“Like the Shakespeare play it’s based on, Thomas Adès’ opera The Tempest is set on an enchanted island.”
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).