Questo e Quello

Jazzed up

In response to a very official-looking email from the Business and Legal Affairs department of the Universal Music Group, La Cieca reluctantly must now reveal that the mp3 she mischievously identified as “a track from Renee Fleming‘s new jazz album” is in fact nothing of the kind. The clip was meant as a travesty of…

Key changes

La Cieca has just been informed that the legendary team of superagents Bruce Zemsky and Alan Green have packed their bags and moved out of CAMI, presumably to start up their own management firm. Zemsky and Green handled artists ranging from Marcelo Alvarez to Mariana Zvetkova; no word yet on how many of the dozens…

Spit it out!

This is getting ridiculous, folks. La Cieca, sitting here in New York, reported four days ago that David Gockley had accepted an offer to helm San Francisco Opera. And now she hears that Gockley broke the news to his Houston Grand Opera staff “days ago.” And still no announcement from the city by the bay!…

Gockley says yes

Breaking News! According to a source at San Francisco Opera, David Gockley has accepted the company’s offer to serve as their new General Manager — exactly as rumored and then predicted here in La Cieca’s column!

Media awake with a start

You heard it here first. In fact, you heard it here a month ago — and now the “other” media are finally picking up on the operatic story of the year. According to the Houston Chronicle, David Gockley is mulling an offer from San Francisco “to lead that city’s legendary but troubled opera company.” La…

Head line

Which diva, star of a new production that was one of the Met’s hottest tickets of recent years, has refused to repeat her role in a future season because she can’t stand the staging? We’ll hear her sing a different title role instead.

Lyric drama

Once Matthew Epstein has left Chicago (as reported this morning at musicalamerica.com), you can be sure he’ll have better things to do than rest on his laurels. La Cieca hears that Matthew has his eye on San Francisco Opera, succeeding Pamela Rosenberg there. But the competition for this post is fierce: front runners include Charles…

The doctor is out

Let the dancing in the streets begin! Jonathan Miller, who has spent the last two decades multitasking between creating pretentiously dull opera productions and whingeing about the stupidity of opera and opera singers, has at long last decided to call it quits. Following a sure-to-be-listless staging of La Clemenza di Tito in April 2005, the…

Millenial Marty

Just imagine! The legend herself, Anja Silja taking time out of a busy rehearsal schedule (and despite her concern about the orchestra, problematic in early runthroughs)—to talk to parterre box. I confess I imagined she would be at least a little bit like her character of Emilia Marty—cynical, burned out, impatient. What a surprise, then,…