Questo e Quello
“Anna Bolena… opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday in a new production featuring Anna Netrebko and two handsome Irish wolfhounds who helped us get through one very tedious scene.” (Bloomberg News, Manuela Hoelterhoff)
Deutsche Grammophon has a new hunk on the market, ignoring the fact that he’s been around for twenty years. Ildebrando d’Arcangelo has been steadily building a career since the early 90s, getting a reputation as a reliable, intelligent artist with a supple bass-baritone. He has a lengthy career of singing with the greats under his…
“Queen Anna is dead — long live Queen Anna! The late royal lady is Anna Bolena in Donizetti’s 1830 opera, based on the final days of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. The new monarch — ruling not over England but the Met — is Anna Netrebko, whose radiant performance at the company’s opening…
Tonight’s the night, cher public, traditionally the busiest of the year here at parterre. Complete details on the opening night performance of Anna Bolena after the jump.
As several of you were sharp-eyed enough to notice (and sharp-tongued enough to mention), our previous Regie quiz was in fact a repeat, and La Cieca is sorry to say it looks like a production that hardly deserved a reprise: Rossini’s Semiramide directed by Nigel Lowery. A new and different challenge to your sleuthing skills…
Mesdames, messieurs, and others: here it is, your weekly chance to shine in off-topic badinage, chitchat, persiflage, raillery, repartee and small talk.
Awesome Anita Rachvelishvili (top) will be the Principessa di Bouillon opposite the Maurizio of Jonas Kaufmann (bottom) and—presumably—Angela Gheorghiu in the title role of Adriana Lecouvreur for Opera Orchestra of New York on November 8, or as we call in here at parterre, “Die Nacht des Sternstunden.”
“’I never understood why’… Men take steroids. I mean ok, it makes you big and buff, but it shrinks your penis. I mean ok, the muscles attract the women, but at the end of the night, aren’t they embarrassed?” [Playbill Arts] “Some in the business call it ‘Peter’s Dilemma’.” [New York Times]
Our Own Betsy (pictured) shrieks, “WELCOME TO THE DARK SIDE ! A whole afternoon full of really bad bargains with the King of the Underworld.”
La Cieca is delighted to announce that after a long absence Our Own JJ (not pictured) has returned to the pages of Musical America with another entry in his “Rough and Regie” blog— this time comparing Atys with Follies.
Yes, yes, La Cieca realizes that parterre has gone “All Anna All the Time,” but, hey, she’s opening the Met season in a company premiere, plus we like her. Anyway, La Netrebko is profiled, covered, revealed, reported, what she eats and when and where, whom she knows and where she was and when and where…
Deutsche Grammophon has just released Anna Netrebko: Live at the Metropolitan Opera, a CD with 11 excerpts recorded live from her Met performances from 2002 through 2010. Released to feature the soprano just prior to her opening in the Met’s Anna Bolena, the CD features Netrebko singing solo arias as well as duets with such…
Here, on what appears to have been a rather chilly evening, are Michael Fabiano and his “mom” Renée Fleming in Die Walküre Lucrezia Borgia at the San Francisco Opera.
Today is the dress rehearsal/preview of Anna Bolena at the Met, and naturally La Cieca has infiltrated the event with a veritable phalanx of spies. After the jump: all your latest Anna Netrebko related news.
“Sony Classical is proud to announce the signing of an exclusive recording contract with Plácido Domingo. This new agreement brings the legendary singer back to the company where his unparalleled recording career started in the late 1960s. Sony Classical’s catalog boasts many of his milestone recordings, and the renewed collaboration between Mr. Domingo and the…
I have been tossing and turning over La Cieca’s most recent assignment for me: a CD of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer based on a performance live in concert from November 13, 2010. The anxiety mainly stems from the fact that, horror to say, I am no Wagnerite. I know that sect of opera buffs has…
For those of you not fortunate or not conscientious enough to attend Atys at BAM this week, there’s a video document of the production (taped earlier this year) following the jump.
Versatile diva Violeta Urmana takes on the demanding verismo role of Giordano’s Fedora for the first time at… Oh, sorry, that’s René Pape as Méphistophélès in Faust at Covent Garden! (Photo by Catherine Ashmore)
Every year New York City opera-lovers eagerly anticipate the autumn because it means that summer is finally over and we can get back to serious opera-going, and this September promises “The Battle of the A’s.”
The prognosis from Jonas Kaufmann‘s surgery seems to be very positive indeed: the tenor and his family were spotted Saturday enjoying the Oktoberfest in Munich. Details after the jump.
Even though that other soprano, whatever her name is, has garnered a lot of ink for opening the Met season with Anna Bolena, the real news here is the “dream team” Gheorghiu/Callas collaboration, a highlight of which has been the “Divina Draculette” photo retouching competition. La Cieca has sifted the many fine entries and has…
A 1989 production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera should have been another jewel in Herbert von Karajan’s already quite impressive crown. A stellar cast, an impeccable orchestra, an enormous period set –the grand opera of Salzburg under his regime. He had recently finished a studio recording with the cast, and was preparing them for…
La Cieca invites the dear companions of her loge (i.e., the cher public) to chatter away about any and all unrelated topics, on this, your Intermission Feature thread for the week of September 18.
“With the news this month that James Levine had slipped and injured a vertebra while vacationing in Vermont… Fabio Luisi became the company’s music director in all but name.” [New York Times]
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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