Questo e Quello
Leonard Slatkin explains to the Detroit Free Press that everything was going great guns with the Met Traviata rehearsals until he played stage director, telling Alfredo (James Valenti) to take visual focus in the final seconds of the opera.
Who could be more qualified than Loge to declare, “It just seems to be screaming Walküre to me.” The production doing all that screaming was by Barrie Kosky for the Staatsoper Hannover. La Cieca trusts you too, cher public, will scream — this time with delight — when you divine which opera is represented after…
This cheerful mug is an image from the trailer for La Scoopenda‘s laff-riot CD I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell or whatever it’s called. Video (which incidentally serves as an elegant proof of Dr. Repertoire’s Seventh Rule for Stage Directors) after the jump.
So, speaking of Jonas Kaufmann, who’s up for a chat during this afternoon’s webcast of Don Carlo at 1:00 pm? (Yes, I realize it’s not quite live, but it’s the most interesting offering La Cieca can see, and she received rapturous reports on the performance from a trusted colleague.) Details after the jump.
Maybe it’s just me, but every time I listen to well done French baroque music, my imagination flies to the opulent halls of Versailles. I fantasize about being amongst Louis XIV and his cohorts drunk on wine, good food, and better music, enjoying the life of a bon vivant. Few recordings have created this vivid…
A snippet of last week’s performance of Le Grand Macabre, after the jump. There’s more video plus details on next week’s broadcast of the Ligeti at nyphil.org.
Dawn Fatale (pictured) shares with us a horoscope:
Way back in 1998, a meticulous parterre contributor (pseudo) named Ortrud Maxwell (right), penned three exhaustive articles tracing cancellations and (especially) replacements in operatic recordings up to that date. La Cieca is delighted to republish this superb series in its entirety.
I have to confess to a certain bias: I adore Rossini’s music. Barber was the first album I ever bought, and fittingly, the first opera I ever sang. Rossini was an astonishingly prolific composer, writing more than thirty-five operas, as well as numerous secular and sacred choral works, songs, and chamber music.
Linda Watson and John Treleaven have issued a joint not-apology, blaming “selective and biased representation of these interviews” for giving the impression that anything was less than stellar at the “fantastic history-making project” that is the LA Ring cycle. [Class Act via OperaChic]
With only 117 days remaining before the start of the Met’s 2010-2011 season, Olga Borodina has withdrawn from the revival of Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Stepping into the gondola will be Enkelejda Shkosa. Yes, that’s right, the lineup of Hoffmann ladies will be Elena Mosuc, Hibla Gerzmava, and Enkelejda Shkosa — at a $420 top.
The great Italian baritone died earlier today. He was 93. Taddei enjoyed a career spanning over half a century, making his Met debut at the age of 69 in 1985. [via ApCom]
After all these years of solitude, La Cieca has finally found another opera fan with a Maria Callas tattoo! More photos after the jump.
La Cieca will never, ever again (even if she ever had, which she didn’t so much) complain about the comments of the cher public. The comments are far and away crazier (and not in an entertaining way) elsewhere.
Look, this is a very special piece of music for me. You were twenty once, right? You were self-righteous. You had your musical heroes, and your mind was being remolded every fifteen minutes or so by a rapid succession of new experiences that challenged your notions of what music could do.
There is no cry heard more often these days than, “Where are all the Verdi sopranos?!?” Yes, there was a day when we had the likes of Aprile Millo, Eva Marton, Leontyne Price, Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Leonie Rysanek, Zinka Milanov and Antonietta Stella all singing in the same, say 25 or 30 years. While…
No one, not even the company’s near-septuagenarian General Director/Wälsung, has stumbled thus far in the West Coast cycle of Wagner’s tetralogy; in fact, the only ones complaining are the handful of LaRouche protesters outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Of course, things are bound to heat up when mouthy heldentenor John Treleaven makes his first official…
The American mezzo-soprano and soprano is 79 years old today.
Maria Guleghina‘s Turandot on PBS right now, and, holy hell, I didn’t realize just how incredibly awful it sounded. How could anyone let such a thing be released — no, escape — on HD?
Some things, like hearing an evening of chamber music on a barge in the East River, sound better on paper than they actually are. And some things work exactly the opposite way: for example, the composer David del Tredici. Bargemusic presented soprano Courtenay Budd in a program of two song cycles from the 1990s by…
It truly is a red-letter day when La Cieca manages to propose a Regie quiz that fails to elicit from you clever pusses even a single correct guess. Last week’s opera was something of a double whammy, as it consisted of a modern piece produced in a non-traditional manner. Enough suspense: the work was Henze’s…
Some of you may remember a few weeks ago comments veered off into a discussion of relative sizes of 19th century theaters vs. modern opera houses and, specifically, the issue of a stage apron, a playing area that extended past the proscenium into the auditorium proper, therefore allowing singers to take advantage of warmer acoustics…
Carlos Álvarez has withdrawn from the Metropolitan Opera’s January 2011 performances of Rigoletto. Veteran Verdian Leo Nucci will take on the title role for these five performances, including the Saturday broadcast.
Which singer was not unwell when he withdrew “because of illness” from that production already rife with cancellations, but rather was fired because he had not yet mastered his music?
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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