Questo e Quello
The relative obscurity of Karol Szymanowski‘s Krol Roger (King Roger, 1924) can only be blamed on its being in Polish. The music is often as thrilling as anything by Janácek or Bartók, and the libretto by Jaroslow Iwaszkiewicz (heavily adapted by the composer) is as full of provocative philosophical ideas as operas by those composers…
“Saturday night’s Met debut of Vittorio Grigolo in La Boheme was promising enough to suggest the tenor may one day live up to his own hype.” [New York Post]
“So, how is this new Pavarotti?” or, “This young tenor, what’s his name, I saw him on the morning show, is he any good?” When people who have never set foot inside an opera house—and know Maria Callas chiefly as the woman Aristotle Onassis dumped for Jacqueline Kennedy—start asking me such questions, then I…
“As the flirtatious Musetta, American soprano Takesha Meshe Kizart won the audience’s hearts with the charm and flair of her personality and a potent upper register, including some formidable high C’s for her Waltz Song.” [AP]
As we count down the weeks until the first live Met Saturday afternoon broadcast of the season, subjects for chat continue in rich array.
Simpler can be better, as Pocket Opera of New York demonstrated in the back of the Bechstein Showroom on Wednesday evening for their double bill of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and Debussy’s La chute de la maison Usher. When I heard these operas would be presented in English with piano accompaniment, I was initially…
“I saw the dress rehearsal of the Covent Garden Manon, and Vittorio had that metaphysical connection with the audience. I’m convinced of his potential.” [New York Times]
One of the buildings at Lincoln Center has become infested by a disgusting, blood-sucking parasite. And besides that, the David H. Koch Theater now has bedbugs. [AP] UPDATE: And now, like Beverly Sills and Sam Ramey, the bedbugs have “graduated” to the theater across the plaza. [Wall Street Journal]
You know La Cieca adores her some Gheorghiu, but the “scheduled” (not to mention the Soprano Math) just cries out for mockery.
“At the close of Boris Godunov, a leaderless Russia churns in chaos. Happily, the Met’s new production of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece — despite a last-minute turnover on the production team — ended triumphantly.” [New York Post]
At the risk of “pulling a Kathy Lee,” here’s a preliminary to tonight’s Met performance of Les Contes d’Hoffmann dedicated to Dame Joan Sutherland.
One of La Cieca’s favoritest bloggers in the whole wide world, Opera Cake, takes on the task of reviewing and explicating the “tough” Calixto Bieito production of Aïda, now running in Basel. And another scribe rapidly moving up in the ranks, Likely Impossibilities, takes a different but equally valid approach.
Performance Lab 115‘s adaptation of the first two parts of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, simply titled The Ring Cycle: [Parts 1+2], is a clever, well thought-out, if not entirely successful attempt to mythologize Wagner’s epic within the framework of 1980’s professional wrestling.
Our Own JJ remembers Dame Joan Sutherland in the New York Post and for WQXR. We can also report that tonight’s Met performance of Les Contes d’Hoffmann will be dedicated to Dame Joan, and on Sunday, the company’s Sirius channel will feature a playlist of historical Sutherland performances, including Lucia di Lammermoor, La sonnambula, Norma,…
“Playthings of the Gods: Essential Myths,” the Vertical Player Repertory’s evening of Monteverdi, Britten and Milhaud, heard October 8, was a satisfying treat. The soloists were excellent, although the venue, Christ Church Cobble Hill, had overwhelmingly boomy acoustics and robbed the audience of any nuance in the voices.
The Australian soprano, called “The Voice of the Century,” died yesterday. She was 83. [Sydney Morning Herald]
Ever-vigilant Quanto Painy Fakor needed hardly more than a glance at last time’s Regie quiz to deduce the identity of the work: L’incoronazione di Poppea. Others of you quickly followed suit with the details of the company (Ópera de Oviedo) and director (Emilio Sagi). And now, Anna Bolena, right?
La Cieca is delighted to inform the cher public (pictured) that Betsy has managed in the very nick of time to aggregate a list of listening (and chatting) possibilities for this afternoon.
Even as La Cieca tippy-taps these words, the 30-hour Boston–New York–Boston marathon has begun for the maestro about whom the following was written less than two weeks ago: Still, the state of Mr. Levine’s health and music making were major concerns going into this evening. When he took his bow during the curtain calls he…
“The director of Anna Bolena is looking for two (2) well-defined muscular men of impressive size to be two stags with antlers wrestling onstage shirtless and barefoot.” [Art&Seek]
Congratulations to Nicola Lischi, of the younger generation of critics the one with the best developed… knowledge of Italian opera, for his first review on Opera Brittania.
Says the Met press office: “Alfred Kim will make his Met debut as Manrico in three fall performances of Il Trovatore, replacing Marcelo Álvarez, who has withdrawn from the November 11, 15, and 19 performances for personal reasons.”
Kirill Petrenko will be the new General Music Director of the Bayerische Staatsoper, succeeding Kent Nagano on September 1, 2013 for a five-year contract. [Bayerische Staatsoper]
“Das neue Traumpaar” offer a duet from a their recent joint role debuts.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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