Bass-barihunk
“Richard Bernstein is a very good-looking guy, even with his clothes on.”
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Plying her trade
“Renowned soprano Renée Fleming demonstrates how she can treat a song like a mini-opera.”
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).
The wrong note drag
“…the Met’s brand new production of Die Fledermaus, which premiered on New Year’s Eve, is overproduced, undersung and interminable, less a holiday entertainment than a checklist of opera-making skills the company can’t seem to master.”
“Say, what’s in this drink?”
Given the no-show of Anna Netrebko at the final dress rehearsal of L’elisir d’amore, the recent rift in the Netrebko-Schrott household and this insane weather, La Cieca thinks it’s time for the hive mind to decide who’s singing Adina at the Met on Thursday night.
Unique gal
“Mary Garden once said, ‘None of those dumb blondes can play my life.’ How right she is.”
Ah, youth!
For this week’s blast from the past, Jungfer Marianne Leizmetzerin has unearthed an in-house tape featuring Met newbies Plácido Domingo and Montserrat Caballé singing Un ballo in maschera in 1970!
When owls attack
Philip Glass’s 25th opera The Perfect American was originally commissioned for New York City Opera during the aborted regime of Gerard Mortier.
Le jazz tiède
The crossover album: a hint that that an artist has either exhausted all the repertory at her command and owes her record label a new release or that her waning vocal resources really shouldn’t be taxed much further than an octave.
Worth saying
Let’s get the new year started off right, cher public, with a tasteful, well-mannered discussion of off-topic and general interest subjects.
Red letter day
The Cologne Opera Fledermaus, announced as a concert performance turned out to be a much livelier and funnier affair than expected. Thanks to the excellent direction of the singers, the beautiful costumes, an unusually sparkling ensemble composed of great local favorites, and star singers for the two lead roles, this was as joyful and exciting a performance as any fully staged version.
Orpheus goes downtown
Marc-Antoine Charpentier came along at the wrong time for a composer of French opera.
Precious snowflake
Bundle up warmly, cher public, and enjoy a weather-appropriate selection from the Mike Richter hoard.
Game theory
I first became aware of the work of Austrian film director Michael Haneke a few years back when I followed a tip from a friend and rented the well-reviewed The White Ribbon.
Ogni Cura
“Ogni Cura si doni al diletto / E s’accorra nel magico petto,” the joke went back in the late ’90s. What wags we were!
You were revived, you know
The merits of Candide—Leonard Bernstein‘s musically glimmering yet dramatically awkward comic operetta based on Voltaire’s novella – are on ravishing display at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
Fans de siècle
As if listening live to tonight’s gala Met premiere of Die Fledermaus were not frivolity sufficient unto the end of the calendar year, La Cieca and Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin (pictured above, in no particular order) offer an alternative version of Strauss’s operetta for your amusement.
With one look
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2014-2015 season will consist of Tannhäuser, The Passenger, Tosca, Porgy and Bess, Il Trovatore, Anna Bolena, Capriccio and Don Giovanni.
Bat mitzvah?
“They have a menorah and a Christmas tree,” he said, alluding to their assimilated status.
Ancien regie
“But like any production left out in the sun a few decades, it gradually faded into mere decoration.”
Blessings counted
Golden oldie
Eight hundred years ago, the “youth of Beauvais” in the north of France created a sacred festival “play,” Ludus Danieli (ludus—meaning a sacred event? a performance? a game? a joke?) for the annual Fool’s Night on January 1 at the cathedral.