Ghost boaster
Can a day pass without the New York Times‘ 24/7 coverage of the Met’s Ring getting on yet another of La Cieca’s nerves?
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Billy in the doldrums
This Billy Budd would have worked better with a stronger set of singers.
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).
It might as well be Einspring
Kate Royal withdrew as Mozart’s Contessa the other night (May 3) in Munich and we were forced to accept as substitute—gosh!—Anja Harteros
Honor your parterre masters, would you forfend disasters!
Do take a break from Wagner long enough to enjoy this week’s intermission feature, cher public.
The Regieness is all
When Quanto Painy Fakor said “Hamlet,” ianw2 replied, “You know what, you may be right.”
Fit to print
La Cieca (pictured, right) invites you to peruse what’s making headlines today.
Czech mate
At first glance, Ivor Bolton, Chief Conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, would seem an odd choice to lead Jenufa, Janacek’s grim tale of infanticide and oppressive village morality.
Re-entrance
La Cieca (not pictured) has just accessed a new feature in YouTube that imported a dozen or so “classic” parterre video clips from Google Video into the familiar YouTube interface.
Look around: everywhere you turn is heartache
“Stuart Skelton will sing the role of Siegmund in Wagner’s Die Walküre on Monday, May 7, replacing Jonas Kaufmann who is ill.”
La tisi non le accorda che poche rappresentazioni
Here’s something you can hardly call news, because it’s an old story everyone expected to happen anyway.
Petered out
Daniel Wakin reports that “WQXR pulled a blog posting critical of the Metropolitan Opera’s new Ring cycle last month after the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, personally complained to the radio station’s top executive…”
None so blind item
Wait, don’t guess until you’ve read what’s after the jump.
Under water
Rusalka and her sisters are huddled in the flooded basement.
Immortal beloved
Janácek’s Makropulos Case has only chalked up thirteen performances in three previous runs at the Met and will have just five more this season. Try to catch at least one.
When Divas Collide II: Mad Men Edition
To kick off this week’s intermission feature, cher public, La Cieca invites you to imagine who said what to whom to make two legendary ladies laugh so lustily?
Screen and screen again
The New York Times sends cub reporter (Get it? Cub reporter! Oh, La Cieca is killing herself with the puns!) Zachary Woolfe to the movie palaces of the heartland.
A shot in the dark
Which diva, oblivious to the open mikes of the theater PA system, recently fired off this immortal line at her impresario: “You run this place like the Gestapo!”
Don’t drop the Regie
Our most recent Regie quiz yielded lots of guesses from the cher public, many of them very clever indeed.
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth
“The Met’s new Ring is the most frustrating opera production I have ever had to grapple with.”
ENO is enough
The repertory for the upcoming season of the English National Opera (also known as “Peter Gelb‘s shopping list”) boasts the world premiere of a new opera by Philip Glass, The Perfect American, which imagines the last days of Walt Disney.
Hier bleibt Elektra
The Met has finally released the contents of the James Levine 40th Anniversary box sets separately for those of us who didn’t have $500 lying around.
L’Âge d’Or
A friend of the box just reminded La Cieca that tonight, April 22, 2012 is the 40th anniversary of the farewell gala honoring Sir Rudolf Bing.