Hot pants explosion
On this day in 1976 mezzo-soprano Tatiana Troyanos made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Octavian.
Recent Stories
Broadcast: Aida
Let’s all sing “O terra addio” to the those crumbly styrofoam pharaoh toes.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
In the baroque midwinter
It’s been a rough winter in Chicago, and an especially rough one for lead singers at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Once in love with Amy
“Trove Thursday” leaps to the end of the cycle with a slightly abridged Götterdämmerung featuring Amy Shuard as Brünnhilde.
She’s the top
Happy 88th birthday soprano Mady Mesplé!
Born to be wild
Happy 75th birthday soprano Kiri Te Kanawa.
Take the long way Rome
Russell Thomas’s opening aria, “Del piu sublime soglio” displayed an intense attention to the text and some surprisingly beautiful piano phrasing that I’ve never heard risked before and it brought wonder and gooseflesh.
Tone police
Sixty years ago today, Berg’s Wozzeck was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera.
Broadcast: Joyce DiDonato sings opera, jazz and tango!
Joyce DiDonato and her band fuse Italian Baroque bel canto classics, jazz ballads, and tunes from the Great American Songbook into one illuminating musical program.
Have not saints lips?
On this day in 1830 Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi premiered in Venice.
The old song and dance
The most disappointing performance in 30 otherwise glorious years of William Christie and Les Arts Florissants visiting New York City.
Like a virgin
On this day in 1970 mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Adalgisa.
Broadcast: La Fille du Régiment
The Met season’s final performance of the Donizetti romcom begins at 1:00 PM.
The cradle will shock
Birthday anniversaries of composers Kurt Weill (1900) and Marc Blitzstein (1905).
Our retrospection will now be all to the future
La Cieca is delighted to announce that the most popular posts for the month of February dealt primarily with the Met season yet to come.
Cri du coeur
Sondra Radvanovsky returned for her 29th Met Aïda Thursday night (but only her second Aïda.)
And now a word from our sponsors
La Cieca and the gang down at parterre box extend our sincerest thanks to our angels whose largesse keeps our blog blogging: sponsors Carnegie Hall, Mirror Visions Ensemble and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Manon with a plan
On this day in 1913, the Met revived Manon with Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso, Arturo Toscanini conducting.
“The weight of this sad time we must obey”
If Glenda Jackson, who is 82 years old, can whip through King Lear in two hours and 45 minutes, then how is it that La Traviata at the Met slogs on for over three hours?
Thousands cheer
Although Gustav Mahler never wrote an opera, his colossal Eighth Symphony “The Symphony of a Thousand” may give us some glimpses of what a Mahler opera might have sounded like
She came to prove him with hard questions
On this day in 1862 Gounod’s La Reine de Saba premiered in Paris.
Knight fever
It’s an 8:00 PM curtain tonight for the Met’s Falstaff.
Alpha doge
West Bay Opera’s sterling production of Verdi’s I due Foscari played over the last two weekends.