To give one pause
An early start for the Sunday chat, cher public.
Questo e Quello
Where will the elite meet?
With the Met’s single tickets for the 2012-13 season going on sale Sunday morning, it’s surely about time we, the movers and shakers and parterrians, made our customary ukase on which of the company’s attractions are worth seeing this year and which, not so much.
The shock of the new
“The article also referred imprecisely to offerings in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2012-13 season.”
I enjoy being a valkyrie
So, take a look after the jump and tell La Cieca the two things that are wrong (they’re related) about the cover of the Met’s new Ring DVD/Blu-ray.
Endgame
Based on reliable reports about reshuffling of the Met’s repertoire for the 2013-14 season, the only reasonable conclusion is that James Levine will never return to conduct with the company.
Red sauce
La Cieca has put her little grey cells to work and deduced that Opera Orchestra of New York will present two performances next season…
Rung number
Unlike Mozart, the young Gioacchino Rossini seldom let his ambitions strain relations with employers.
By Adriel
3 comments
The Wurm turns
The Met’s controversial Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage (not pictured) and conducted by TBA (possibly pictured) makes its home video debut on September 11.
Problem solved!
EMI Classics will release Fifty Shades of Grey – The Classical Album…
F. and Furious
Has it been a year already? Apparently so.
Stairway to paradise
We approach, beloveds, as unto a shrine, for these are no ordinary performances.
Kaufmänner
“Taking the libretto’s description of ‘panther-like’ literally, Bacchus appears in a shiny leopard-print suit…”
Ariadne auf Salzburg
Live webcast from Salzburg, right now: the 1912 Ariadne/Le bourgeois gentilhomme.
A gal a night is enough for me
Chatter away, cher public, for here is your foyer for off-topic and general interest discussion during the week of August 5.
“He’s a naive domestic Intendant without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by his presumption”
With the country mired in a recession and the Met carrying a heavy load of debt, what better publicity can there be than a sycophantic profile in the Wall Street Journal featuring Peter Gelb snarfing up an $800 bottle of “explosively rich” wine?
Anything you can do icon do better
In what surely counts as the most startling sleeper story of the week in opera, soprano Patricia Racette has been canonized a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church.
Suppose they gave a Ring and no one came
For whatever reason (Lack of James Levine? Incompetence of Robert LePage? The economy? Wagner overload?), next season’s Ring cycle at the Met doesn’t seem to be selling.
Marguerite Piazza 1926-2012
Soprano, television personality and fundraiser Marguerite Piazza died yesterday.
Planks, for the memory
The Robert Lepage production of the Ring cycle will be shown complete (including the now de rigueur fifth part of the pentalogy, Wagner’s Dream) September 11-14 on PBS
In the day of success
“I have learned by the perfectest report they have more in them than mortal knowledge.”
Questions and antlers
Verdi’s only successful comic opera, Falstaff, is notably hard to produce.
Puccini three ways
Puccini’s evening of one-act operas Il Trittico seems to be riding a wave of popularity over the last few years, with a new production at the Met and several high-profile productions in America and Europe.
The king who would be man
Sometimes an obscure opera is revived, and everyone hails a lost masterpiece.
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).