A river runs through it
I can think of no other case that resembles Handel’s complex relationship to the story—derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses—of the ill-fated love between the shepherd Acis and the sea nymph Galatea.
Recent Stories
Mama’s talkin’ loud
Sleep soundly tonight, Kasper Holten: your Vêpres Siciliennes casting problem has just been solved!
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).
Show business
Now that many of us are leaping to the altar unfettered by those pesky legalities of yore the problem of what to put on the bridal (or groomal) registry has become an atrocious head scratcher. So many of us have had housekeeping set up for so long now that we really don’t want for anything. […]
Courage… du courage!
La Cieca hears that soprano Alex Penda is en route to London on a rescue mission, for which her friends (young or otherwise) are doubtless giving thanks.
Fall back
Just think of it, cher public, a whole extra hour in which to discuss off-topic and general interest subjects!
Breaking Baden
Baden-Baden 1927 is the title Gotham Chamber Opera has given to its evening of four brief operas that premiered together at a festival in, yes, Baden-Baden on July 17, 1927.
The laundry of fate has been placed upon the ironing board of the gods
With visuals like this, how can anyone say opera is only about singing?
You don’t have to be Druids to love it
“The Met’s production, originally directed by John Copley, is still a hideous, confusing mess. But with Ms. Meade and Ms. Barton acting with moving subtlety, singing generously and feeling deeply, it was hard to care.”
In memoriam Mike Richter
Serious opera fan and internet pioneer Mike Richter died earlier this week.
Dimples of iron
Well done, rgz: your Photoshop of the Guilty Pleasures CD cover was just exactly right!
Golden “Boys”
Who knows what to expect from an opera about the Internet?
No Posa ability
Not perhaps as enthusiastic a response as La Cieca might have liked to the recent Posa quiz, and no official winner.
But screw your courage to the sticking-place
La Cieca has it on very good authority that the 2014-2015 Met season will include a revival of Verdi’s Macbeth featuring Anna Netrebko.
Yes, the Prince Did Ask Her
“Miss Mary Garden in her dressing room at the Philadelphia Opera House this afternoon, denied that she was soon to marry Prince Movrocordato, as reported in a special cable from Paris in THE NEW YORK TIMES to-day.”
A song at twilight
Yes, you’ve heard it already, but you might as well have an official place to talk about it: Marina Poplavskaya goes on tonight in Les Vêpres siciliennes at the Royal Opera House.
The décolletage after tomorrow
Stand not on ceremony, cher public; in fact, don’t stand at all.
No “Boys” allowed
A shocking message one teenager sends to another leads to scandal and death in an opera featured in this season’s “Live in HD” series from the Met.
The mystery of Stefan’s “Vêpres”
The much-anticipated Stefan Herheim production of Les Vêpres Siciliennes opened last night at the Royal Opera, and the New York Times‘ Zachary Woolfe was something less than completely bowled over.
Le canard laqué
“No opera has entered the international repertory since the premiere of Turandot in 1926.”
Beyond the Valley of the Freemasons
An impresario with a hit on his hands—Emanuel Schikaneder, for instance, after the initial run of Die Zauberflöte—will crave nothing so much as an opportunity to hit the same bell.
Sounds of silence
“Don’t sing anything but teensy bits of Mozart until you’re at least 40…”
