A Faustian bargain
What we have here is the grandest opera never heard.
Recent Stories
A pair of kings
Opera Teen (pictured) approves of this summer’s program at the Glimmerglass Festival.
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).
Shaken, not stirred
Among the highlights of the first performance of Camille was the fact that its only solo was a Parisian ballad sung by ‘Our Mary’ Garden atop a table in her fashionable salon and its only chorus a few ribald lines by a roomful of guests who had drunk enough champagne to be feeling pretty gay.
Hung up
What other company indeed but the Bayerische Staatsoper would commission David LaChapelle to photograph Diana Damrau for their portrait gallery?
Cows and chickens make better friends than I’ve ever met in Paris
Until the Baron de Varville returns, cher public, take this opportunity to indulge in discussion of off-topic and general interest subjects.
All the world loves a crown
Seventeenth century opera remains the true connoisseur’s delight partly because it’s so rarely done.
Lady be good
Anna Netrebko‘ s new CD of Verdi arias seems to be a bold, defiant, “in your face” statement about the direction she is taking with her career.
Canard à l’anglaise
Rupert Christiansen (not pictured) writes, “…a right old mash-up of Meistersinger, confusing, contorting and complicating something which should communicate with radiant emotional and intellectual simplicity.”
Revolutionary étude
Thérèse is a compact work consisting of two short acts and clocks in just under seventy minutes.
E d’ogni re maggior il Trubadur!
La Cieca and DeCaffarrelli unanimously hail Trubadur as winner of the “Ladies in the Dark” vocal ID competition.
Second guess
“An earlier version of this post referred incorrectly to the gender of the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. Ms. Barton is a woman.”
We’ll settle that tonight!
La Cieca has been wining, dining and otherwise wooing her Met connection (pictured above) and he (or is it she?) has come across with some tidbits about upcoming seasons at Casa Gelb.
And to top it all off, the volcano erupts
the strip on my first and, so far at least, only visit to Las Vegas a few years ago, I noticed what to me was a most unexpected sight and startled my companions by pointing out the window and shouting “Auber!”
“Schau sie an, ein Gefangener der Gosse”
In a starling last-minute change of programming, the Salzburg Festival has canceled all further performances of the critically-reviled Peter Stein production of Don Carlos. Weltstars Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann will instead perform My Fair Lady (pictured).
Pêches de vieillesse
“In her first television acting job [Dame Kiri te Kanawa] portrays Dame Nellie Melba, her fellow antipodean soprano, whose purity of voice inspired a peach-based pudding.”
Nie sollst du mich befragen
You can imagine what the next few days were like.
In other news, President Taft today…
“Mary Garden, the famous opera singer who gained particular fame through her rendition of Salome, is to become a nun…”
New fashioned wedding
After the success of its Don Giovanni in 2011, Lincoln Center invited Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra to return for the Mostly Mozart Festival premiere (!) of the first of Mozart-da Ponte’s three masterpieces Le Nozze di Figaro late Sunday afternoon at the Rose Theater.
Veil song
I was led through a small labyrinth of white curtains, sheer like veils, to a row of seven chairs jutting in between the stage risers.
See and be seen
Take a look around you, cher public, and perhaps find someone in the next box to discuss off-topic and general interest subjects.
Cogito argo sum
The front runner in our devilishly difficult “D’amor sull’ali” quiz is Giasone (pictured), with 22 of 30 singers correctly identified.
Regina Resnik 1922-2013
The American mezzo-soprano, director, filmmaker and teacher Regina Resnik has died.