Questo e Quello
La Cieca hears from a reliable source that James Valenti is the 2010 Richard Tucker Award winner.
“Her new cerise dress has been a failure, and makes her look tawdry and wan… She frowns a little — not in anger, but as a brave child frowns when he is trying not to cry. In all that expanse no human eye is looking at her, and she may frown unrebuked…”
The cancellation of Anna Netrebko of her Vienna performances of I puritani — on five days’ notice — inspires La Cieca to introduce an all-new tag relevant to this sort of event.
“The Met’s first production of Rossini’s supernatural opera Armida was supposed to be a showcase for star soprano Renée Fleming…. But by the time the opera ended Monday — four hours after it began — only a few of the less-than-capacity audience were left to applaud. The magic wasn’t there.” [NYP]
La Cieca just heard that Angela Gheorghiu has canceled tonight’s performance of Traviata at the Met. Hei-Kyung Hong goes on.
1817 was a fertile and diverse time for 26 year old Gioachino Rossini. It opened with his last true opera buffa, La Cenerentola, continued with his most important semiseria, La gazza ladra, and ended with two operas, which, although both nominally belonging to the seria genre, could not be more different from each other.
La Cieca will not be near a keyboard (or for that matter a theoboro) this evening, but please don’t let that stop you, cher public, from chatting during the Metropolitan Opera premiere of Rossini’s Armida, starring Renée Fleming (not pictured).
Armida in just three hours, and, ironically (given the dramatic weight of this bel canto role) a certain soprano just can’t stop twittering!
UPDATE: La Cieca’s spy reports: He’s here!
The diva is 77 today!
It’s official: James Levine has withdrawn from Cincinnati Opera‘s 90th Anniversary Gala Concert (June 19) and the season-opening production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (June 23 & 26). John Keenan takes up the Wagner duties and a roster of guest conductors fill in at the gala.
Far over on the Upper West Side of Manhattan exists an amazing marvel of the cosmos… the Metropolitan Opera. It is where the opera Tosca is being “prepared” for performance only few days from now.
Well, you know, sometimes it’s not easy being a benefactress. Would you believe that both winners and the runner-up in yesterday’s Zauberflöte contest all live in Nova Scotia and Irkutsk and places like that and so are not able to accept the tickets to Inner Voices playing here in the city. So, round two, after…
The good news: whatever Natalie Dessay‘s “illness” was, she didn’t permanently lose her voice. The bad news: she can still talk.
Getting the “screaming heads” treatment on CNBC is not good news for Peter Gelb.
“The halls of CAMI are not a happy place right now,” an insider informs La Cieca, and according to information received by parterre.com more than half a dozen long-time Columbia Artists Management personnel have not had their contracts renewed in recent weeks.
La Cieca (not pictured) welcomes her cher public to a second week in good old Egypt with this afternoon’s broadcast of Die Zauberflöte. She is delighted to announce that during this afternoon’s chat she will give away tickets to the fascinating new musical theater program Inner Voices which includes that mini-opera Whida Peru: Resurrection Tangle that Valmont…
Which tenor may have bought it — so far as the management is concerned at that theater where they’re still waiting for him to arrive for his first (and last) rehearsal? Just in case, a familiar figure is already heading across the river.
Our Own Gualtier Maldè (right) escaped today’s Armida dress rehearsal at the Met with his wits intact. He reports:
I have to admit, I am not one often seen on the Great White Way; musicals aren’t usually my cup of tea. So as I was charged with reviewing a new musical, Whida Peru: Resurrection Tangle last night at 59E59 Theaters, I decided to call in reinforcements. I brought an amazingly talented and breathtakingly beautiful…
Packaged with a peek-a-boo cover exposing only Bryn Terfel’s lovely left eye (the effect of turning the page to reveal the Welsh bass-baritone’s head in its entirety brings to mind this Encyclopedia Dramatica entry) and an oddly hip-hop-flavored gray-on-black treatment of the album’s title, Terfel’s Bad Boys seems designed for those who like their divos…
Which lady’s silence about her pregnancy will definitely derange her 2010-2011 schedule?
I own almost every recording of the 13 operettas Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote with W.S. Gilbert ever made. Twelve Mikados, 14 Pirates of Penzance, 10 Iolanthes, right on down the line to the rarely heard Utopia, Ltd. I was a G&S fan long before I got into opera; when I was a teenager, their operettas…
Today, in 1848, one of the titans of Italian opera, Gaetano Donizetti, passed away in his native Bergamo at age 51. It would be perhaps more appropriate to say that his body died on this date, as his mind, ravaged by syphilis, had already abandoned him a few years earlier, so much that he had…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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