It is what she would have wanted
Due to wellness, it is with deep contentedness that Marina Poplavskaya will after all sing the role of Alice in Robert le Diable.
Recent Stories
Small scale
In art, less is more — at least most of the time.
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).
Gould standard
Midway through his traversal of Wagner’s 10 mature operas for PentaTone, we’ve learned this about Marek Janowski:
I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy
Freud, who hails from London, spent five years as the general director of Houston Grand Opera and is no stranger to bolo ties and 10-gallon Stetsons.
Swedish frisson
Last week’s freak nor’easter set the tone for Thursday’s chilly new production of Un Ballo in Maschera at the Met.
Balance of tiara
Gather around, cher public (pictured), to discuss off-topic and general interest subjects in this weeks’ Intermission Feature.
I’ve been working on the regie road
Remember, remember, the first of November, the Occupy regie and quiz!
One Saturday in November
My figures show it’s still too early to call Ohio, but other races are more decisive.
Depth perception
Which singing couple is about to get involved in a messy scandal of the sort they usually experience only when performing together on the opera stage?
The man in the ironic mask
The realization of the opera Un ballo in maschera by Verdi and the librettist Antonio Somma is almost as famous as the opera itself.
Cross purposes
In spite of sounding like an indelicate football injury, I Lombardi alla prima crociata was only Giuseppe Verdi’s fourth opera.
Ugh! Neve!
La Cieca celebrates (if that is the word) the first snowfall of the season in New York in the traditional manner.
Opera queen
Now that the cold war thriller The Manchurian Candidate is on track to become an opera, La Cieca naturally will turn to you, the cher public, for casting advice for the upcoming opus.
Sachs appeal
Opera’s Scottish enfant terrible David McVicar has applied his considerable skills in this 2011 Glyndebourne production of Die Meistersinger, the result being a refreshing new take on a familiar warhorse.
Down for the count
The battle of the sexes ended in an upset the other night in Le Nozze di Figaro.
The man behind the mask
Recently your doyenne engaged in an email-based interview with David Alden, director of the Met’s new production of Un ballo in maschera, opening on Thursday.
The long dark intermission feature of the soul
As we fall back to standard time, La Cieca invites to to while away all those hours of darkness with discussion of off-topic and general interest subjects.
So shines a good chat
We need a ray of Light in these dark times.
Anna macchia è qui tuttora
It’s confirmed!
Shipshape
Italo Montemezzi’s La Nave, premiered in 1918 and not performed anywhere since 1938, concerns itself with nautical power, male and female archetypes, love and hate conjoined, sex and death, the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire — and the visionary future of Old Venice.
Once in half a lifetime
Then and now: the “Dio ti giocondi, o sposo” duet from Otello.
Whose regie? Our regie!
Oh, those Alps (“Loved her, hated him!”) have done it again, or at least for the first time.