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Yes, another YouTube posting, but this one is something very special indeed. Legendary Zarah Leander is seen in a few moments from her 1975 triumph as Madame Armfelt in Das Lächeln einer Sommernacht (A Little Night Music) at the Theater an der Wien. La Leander also cavorts about a studio, lipsynching a medley of her…
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1962: “Il compositore Joseph Kosma … ha composto un’opera con musica elettronica, rappresentata a Berlino, in cui viene cantato l’amore di una donna per un robot.” (Thanks to A7Sogno for sending this clip!)
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BTW, this film is called La donna più bella del mondo, and it’s very loosely suggested by certain events and characters in the life and legend of Lina Cavalieri. (In other words, it’s utter and pure fiction.) But anyway, la Cavalieri is portrayed by Gina Lollbrigida, who certainly lives up to the title “The Most…
Kitty: I was reading a book the other day. Carlotta: Reading a book! Kitty: Yes. It’s all about civilization or something, a nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy said that machinery is going to take the place of every profession? Carlotta: Oh, my dear, that’s something you need never worry…
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Neither is opera-related, but La Cieca just can’t help herself. Nothing really changes.
The delightful and greatly missed Madeline Kahn explains how she almost became an opera singer. The complete version of this 1985 Opera Quiz, also featuring Kitty Carlisle Hart and Charles Nelson Reilly, can be found on Veoh. com.
In what La Cieca chooses to believe is a warmup for the title role of Simon Boccanegra, Plácido Domingo will appear as “Himself” on an episode of The Simpsons to air in the fall of 2007. According to PlaybillArts, the tenor/maestro/intendant will figure into a storyline concerning Homer Simpson‘s midlife career change to singing opera.…
As La Cieca is sure her cher public has heard, the term “to ski” is now used widely in Craigslist personal ads to indicate an interest in recreational use of cocaine. The divine Grace Moore here demonstrates how these ideas became associated.
As a warmup for this evening’s Unnatural Acts of Opera podcast of Parsifal (Act 1), a short film by Kopernikus1618 demonstrating what happens when “Andy Warhol meets Richard Wagner.” Speaking of Unnatural Acts, La Cieca is once more setting a precedent by offering an alternative to the current program of Wagner’s Rienzi, a live performance…
Natalie Dessay and Rolando Villazon in the St. Sulpice scene from Manon, as telecast from Barcelona Saturday night.
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