Questo e Quello
“Il più amato, il più osannato, il solo e unico varietà operistico radiofonico quotidiano,” or, as we call it, La Barcaccia, examined earlier this week “Donne sull’orlo di una crisi di nervi.” The divas on a verge of a nervous breakdown include Cecilia Bartoli and our own Renée Fleming in a (though not the) legendary…
Well, La Cieca thought surely by now someone would have come up with the title of last week’s Regie quiz, but, go figure. Prepare to slap your forehead and yell, “Of course,” because it’s Die Soldaten in a production that’s just opened at De Nederlandse Opera, directed by Willy Decker. Now, this week, La Cieca…
Eyes flash! Fans snap! Petticoats rustle omiously! It’s a full-scale diva catfight online as producer David McVicar lashes out at the “sheer, crass ignorance and spitefulness” of bloggress Intermezzo!
A Netrebko can flutter her wings over a flower at the Vienna Staatsoper and cause an hurricane in Avery Fisher Hall. [Wig & Pen]
“The enigma at the center of the epic was Marina Poplavskaya’s Elizabeth.” [New York Post]
“…whenever he was joined by the baritone Simon Keenlyside, who sang Rodrigo, the Marquis of Posa and Carlo’s devoted friend, Mr. Alagna opened up in every way.” Well, wouldn’t you? [NYT]
“Because the one I had for lunch was delicious.”
Very few things intrigue me as much as analyzing belcanto operas, comparing their several versions and examining the composers’ second thoughts, modifications and revisions that, willingly or unwillingly, they made to their scores. I was already salivating when I heard that the Teatro Comunale di Bologna was going to perform Vincenzo Bellini’s I Puritani in…
The blog GTL Torn T (which La Cieca assumes has something to do with gay teens in torn t-shirts) offers a sound clip from the prima of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera. Very attractive stuff, though La Cieca must insist that she does not care for that concert ending on “La dolcissima effigie!”
Whom would you prefer to pat down at an airline security check-in?
After a rather long afternoon at the Met, a member of the cher public writes: “The Don Carlo final dress was worth catching.” Our spy has more to say after the jump.
“Revival. Strange word, and creepy, when you think about it. Something used to be alive, then it wasn’t and now (presumably) it is, again. But it’s that last step, the actual reviving that seems so often to elude the revival of an opera production.” [Musical America]
La Cieca (left, seated) invites the cher public (center) to gather at La Cieca’s Gypsy Camp for a chat during tonight’s Met performance of Il trovatore this evening beginning at 8:00 pm. Details after the jump.
Seven decades of difference in age doesn’t stand in the way of a charming interview between Marta Eggerth and Zachary Woolfe on the occasion of her viewing her 1932 film Das Blaue vom Himmel for the very first time. (Prepare to be verklempt.) [New York Observer]
La Cieca was bcc:ed on this response from a member of the cher public to a request from the New York City Opera. With the permisssion of the author, she is publishing the note here for your discussion.
I saw the final dress rehearsal of Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera House on Monday this week, and I think I have never seen the place so crowded for such an event. No wonder, for here was a cast you might dream of, in a highly finished piece of work mounted by one of…
Say what you like about the cher public, but they certainly know their Prokofiev! Within half an hour of La Cieca’s posting the most recent Regie quiz, two of you identified the production as The Love of Three Oranges. The staging, by the way, is from the Stadttheater Bern, and the director was Marc Adam.…
Which cord does one snip to make a castrato? So goes a running joke in The Last Castrato by Guy Fredrick Glass, a play about Alessandro Moreschi, the last living castrato and the only one ever recorded. Much of his career was spent as the first soprano of the Sistine Chapel Choir, both because of…
I attend the opera intent on enjoying myself. If the music is not my favorite, there is always something to like, be it a colleague’s individual performance, the discovery of a newcomer, nifty stagecraft or costumes, observing the movement skills of the various singers, or in worst-case scenarios, observing the audience’s boredom, carefully notating the…
Inspired by Our Own Camille (not pictured, obviously), La Cieca proposes a new competition in honor of the Met’s coming revival of La fanciulla del West. Your challenge: share with us the most suggestive double-entendre line in a published synopsis or review of Puccini’s opera.
La Cieca is pleased to announce that off-Broadway sensation (and parterre advertiser) The Last Castrato is offering a 50% discount on tickets to the cher public. Parterrians can enjoy this play with music suggested by the life and career of Alessandro Moreschi for only $9.00—less than the new Harry Potter! Simply use the code word “Parterre,”…
Trash television gets the “royal” treatment. [Danny Knows Best]
Our Own Ercole Farnese discovered and translated this interview in La Stampa with Jonas Kaufmann, in which the tenor discusses his “his idolatrous success with ladies and gay men, four fifths of the opera-goers.”
Which director is driving his Met cast crazy with his perfectionism? As if the rush to opening night is not enough, he’s insisting that every time a scene is rehearsed the blocking must be identical “for the HD broadcast.”
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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