Questo e Quello
As La Cieca scours the web in search of new candidates for the Regiequiz, she sometimes is simply stopped in her tracks by a Konzept so new, so unusual and so innovative that your doyenne cannot help but shift her paradigm. Such a production is this Aida in (of all conservative places) Vienna.
Our own JJ‘s little scribblings over at Gay City News are now indexed on a handy page here at parterre.com.
La Cieca muses at some length on the audience’s relationship with the audience, but then Diana Soviero demonstrates the point in only a few seconds of singing in the third act of Faust. (Neil Shicoff and Samuel Ramey aren’t exactly slouching either in this 1986 performance.) Faust (Gounod) Act 3
Actually, La Cieca is not surprised at all that Aprile Millo is a fan of Amy Winehouse.
La Cieca urges you in the cher public to register on parterre.com. After the simple registration process, you should remain logged in to the site indefinitely, or anyway until you deliberately log out (see the “meta” section of the menu bar to the left). The advantage of registering is that you will not need to key…
Another “Return of Villazón” sound clip from Ed Rosen‘s Premiere Opera Podcast, featuring Rolando Villazón and Sophie Koch in this extended scene from Act 3 of Werther. (Performance on January 28 in Vienna.) Werther
La Cieca, being a very girly sort of girl, is not so good at math, so she is asking you, cher public, to help her with this diffy word problem. So, pick up your Number 2 pencils, and begin. According to the New York Times, when you add all these things together: ….burly presence, effortless power and…
A new page via WordPress for Unnatural Acts of Opera, as well as archive pages you can reach through the sidebar menu (look to your left, darling!)
Such a fame whore is La Cieca that she delights in seeing any mainstream media mention of herself even when the item in question a) is less than complimentary and b) doesn’t even mention her by name. But she has little doubt to whom David Patrick Stearns refers when he writes: The odds – and…
As quite a few of the cher public surmised, the most recent Regiequiz depicted a production of Don Giovanni (at the Landestheater Linz, to be precise) featuring barihunk Martin Achrainer as the eponymous erotomaniac: Herr Achrainer has become something of a blogger’s darling of late, featured at Barihunks as well as Our Own site in…
La Cieca is once more available for dancing in the streets and shouting from the housetops for the (admittedly off-topic) reason that the Technicolor musical campfest Torch Song has made its long-awaited debut on DVD. Only in 1953 — with the Red Scare, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the growing threat from televsion bewildering studio exectives —…
Wondrous Wenarto is back and more bloodthirsty than ever. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/f876_Xw-LYA” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] The Wenarto interpretation is a worthy addition to the YouTube classics by Montserrat Caballé, Leonie Rysanek, Anja Silja and especially William Zauscher.Â
The entirety of the “old” parterre.com (including over 30,000 comments from you, cher public!) is preserved at the parterre box archive site.
Doesn’t it just figure that this story would break only a few minutes after La Cieca used the perfect headline on another story? Oh, well, anyway, Montsi will be fascinated! (via Defamer)
Okay, La Cieca knows a bit about fashion and even a smidge about clothing construction (you should hear her dishing the godets during Project Runway) but she must admit she can’t figure out what the hell Anna Netrebko is wearing here. Did she just take a dip in the pool? Was she performing a nude…
In this operatic adaptation of the Bette Davis classic Dead Ringer, sparks fly when twin sisters Margaret Phillips DeLorca (Grace Bumbry) and Edith Phillips (Grace Bumbry) meet again after 20 years! [kml_flashembed movie=”http://uk.youtube.com/v/8oRpMGQmyG8″ width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Again, La Cieca extends her gratitude to the amazing coloraturafan.
but she can be a little mysterious a times. The cher public averaged seven out of 11 answers correct on our Casta Diva Quiz, with a four-way tie-up for first position. (By which, La Cieca should perhaps add, she means that four contestants had exactly 10 correct answers, not that your doyenne resorted to some…
Glamhilde
Our previous modern-dress interpretation was, as many of you guessed, Falstaff. Now, what opera might contain these stylish folk? Reminder: if you recognize the production, hold your tongue whilst the others make fools of themselves!
A recently rediscovered telecast of Il trovatore from Covent Garden in the fall of 1964 features the Azucena of Giulietta Simionato. This is the only video record of the legendary mezzo in one of her greatest roles. (La Cieca is unutterably indebted to the YouTubers felipecunha and coloraturafan for alerting her to this magnificent document.)
Officially, Anna Netrebko is expecting her baby “this autumn,” and La Cieca of course extends her and Erwin Schrott all the best wishes. However, let’s take a peek at a few recent photos of Netrebko… [Traviata at Covent Garden, early January] [Arriving at the Opernball in Vienna, February 1] [On set of Boheme film, around…
Your doyenne didn’t even make it through the first paragraph of this opera-related article: “I’m not a patient person,” Anna Chatterton confesses over a quinoa brownie at a Toronto coffee shop… A female version of Don Giovanni by a veganess composer? It just doesn’t sound, well, promising, now does it?
…am dunklen Hage. Oh, and by the way, it’s always a delight to hear news about dear Lucine Amara!
Your doyenne has added a contact page so you may email her with all your tastiest soupcons!
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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