Jerry duty
Perhaps the last people in the world still interested in Jerry Springer: the Opera are trying to get together a protest against the January 29 Carnegie Hall concert performance of the "patently obscene and viciously anti-Christian musical." Our own JJ, you know, saw the show in London way back when Jenny Larmore was still fat, and this is some of what he had to say:
La Cieca gives major props to the editor of catholicleague.org, though, for hed writing skillz: "CHRISTIANS SAVAGED AT CARNEGIE HALL" is a grabber!
... the level of wit rarely rose to that of a “Saturday Night Live” skit. The one-joke concept is tipped off in the title: we hear, for example, a countertenor “chick with a dick” shrieking “Talk to the hand!” in mock-Wagnerian hysteria .... Oh, how the audience roared every time anyone said the f-word, which added up to about 500 laughs in the course of the evening. Among the huge cast, the clear standout was David Bedella (Warm Up Man/Satan), a triple-threat star personality with a seemingly limitless vocal range.Bedella reprises his role at Carnegie, which is the only reason La Cieca would recommend the show. Well, the only reason besides pissing off Bill Donohue, who apparently has free time on his hands when he's not taking on Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Kathy Griffin, Mike Huckabee and Chocolate Jesus.
La Cieca gives major props to the editor of catholicleague.org, though, for hed writing skillz: "CHRISTIANS SAVAGED AT CARNEGIE HALL" is a grabber!
Labels: blasphemous musicals, gcn, jj, our own
POSTED at
1:45 AM
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"Soprano 
"When the Met last offered Verdi's Macbeth a quarter century ago, the New York Times slammed Sir Peter Hall's staging as 'the worst new production to struggle onto the Metropolitan Opera's stage in modern history' and the opening night audience greeted the curtain calls with some of the loudest boos in the theater's history. On October 22, the company neatly avoided a reprise of this notorious fiasco when they offered a bland take on the opera unlikely to rouse much strong feeling at all. "
La Cieca is delighted to divulge that our publisher JJ has been asked to participate in the panel discussion "On Opera and Technology" at Columbia University on March 23. The discussion is one event of the two-day conference "Technologies of the Diva" presented by The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. The identities of the other participants of JJ's panel have not been revealed to him yet, but, perhaps in tribute to the blind-item style of La Cieca, the organizers of the conference promise "a well-known soprano," a writer for the New York Times, and "representatives of the Met and NYCO." Mysterious, is it not? For more information on the panel and the conference in general (both are free and open to the public), there's a 
Five newspaper reviews are in for Anna Netrebko's Met Puritani, and the score stands at four postive, one mixed:
According to our editor JJ, the current NYCO production of Semele "provided a luxe vehicle for the talents of soprano Elizabeth Futral as the mortal princess Semele who becomes the mistress of Jove. Futral is gorgeous enough to tempt the king of the gods, feminine and curvaceous, and she has the personality and wit to put over her director’s concept of Semele as a superstar sex kitten." 
Alas, La Cieca can't comment regarding onstage goings on at last night's Traviata at the Met (her evil twin JJ is writing about the event for 
"It’s not like there’s anyone who wants new operas to fail. In fact, audiences, critics, and opera companies alike have huge stakes in seeing new works succeed. And goodness knows the Metropolitan Opera, like any reputable opera company, has a responsibility to present recent compositions. However, reviews are not for good intentions; I have to write about results." Our editor JJ reviews the Met's recent world premiere An American Tragedy (starring 
