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An Italian TV report on the already infamous all-Alagna-all-the-time Orphée. Now, David Alagna may not be one of the world’s great stage directors, but he certainly is among the cutest!
La Cieca pulled a string or two and managed to get permission to embed a clip from the VAI Lucia so recently lauded by Our Own Niel Rishoi. Of course YouTube video and audio is severely compressed, but the imaginative viewer will surely get the gist that this is a performance for the ages.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
This comes under the heading of “so obvious; why didn’t anyone think of this before?” Here’s the opening scene of Amok Time: the Opera, a “cabaret opera” presented by Goat Hall Productions in 2006. The music and libretto are by Steven Clark.
In fact, she became Peggy Lee.
La Dessay rehearses the “bathtub scene” from Manon. Sorry, folks, the video is no longer available for embedding at the request of the uploader, Parsifal1979. You can view it, however, on the YouTube site.
From the 1978 film of Götz Friedrich‘s production of Tannhäuser — alas, not currently available on DVD. Dame Gwyneth Jones is the lady asking the rather personal question.
A number of the cher public have asked for more photos of hunkalicious Jonas Kaufmann, with a several of you specifially requesting a image without the tenor’s accustomed facial stubble. Well, one of La Cieca’s dear readers has obliged by sending a snapshot of Kaufmann before he stopped shaving, or possibly before he even started…
Jummy Jonas Kaufmann records his recital CD Romantic Arias, due for release in March.
Ageless Reri Grist sings “Somewhere” in a rehearsal for the 19th Annual Gypsy of the Year Competition, celebrated earlier this month. La Grist introduced this song 50 seasons ago when West Side Story premiered on Broadway. She is joined in this clip by Chita Rivera, Carol Lawrence and other members of the original company.
A concert in Vienna, 2006.
UPDATE: The YouTube clip of Stephen Costello singing “O Holy Night” is no longer available. Given Stephen’s ubiquity on YouTube, though, surely it can’t be long before another performance of this song goes live, and La Cieca promises to link as soon as her veritable army of sources inform her. In the meantime, here’s another…
If, through some miracle of recombinant DNA manipulation, Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh and Maria Montez were to have a child together, La Cieca is certain this is how she (or he, for that matter) would turn out.
Magnificent Martha Mödl performs a bit of Mahagonny.
A YouTuber new to La Cieca by the name of Promptersbox, has managed to make available the entire La Scala Tristan und Isolde. Your doyenne is not sure exactly where the intense magic in this performance comes from: Patrice Chéreau, Daniel Barenboim or Waltraud Meier. But magic it is!
Maite Beaumont created a sensation as Sesto in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s recent Giulio Cesare. She’s seen and heard here as Cherubino.
This video indicates some of the underlying reasons for the recent shocking increase in acts of violence against character tenors.
Fiorenza Cedolins gets off to a bad start in this performance of Luisa Miller. La Cieca feels that if you’re going to sing like that, you really should avoid the Grayson Hall wig.
La Cieca would never have thought this would work. And yet…
And don’t call her Shirley! It’s the one and only Ruby Hinds singing the cabaletta to “O mio Fernando” at a tribute to Doris Roberts (yeah, go figure) in Beverly Hills.
Joan Sutherland circa 1959, as Lucia, of course.
