Recent Stories
Jummy Jonas Kaufmann and awe-inspiring Anna Netrebko team for the great duet from Manon, as heard last night at the Waldbühne Berlin.
Classical music writer and opera critic Robert Levine has written a very pleasant new book, Weep, Shudder, Die, A Guide to Loving Opera, published by HarperCollins Books. Levine sets up the book’s premise early in his introduction: “Could singing… make one, as the composer Vincenzo Bellini said, ‘weep, shudder, die’ and at the same time…
This just in: Lyric Opera of Chicago and the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) have reached a tentative contract agreement for the coming season. All performances will proceed as planned.
With their quick rise to fame, the cast of MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” has cashed in on a number of endorsement deals, including weight loss supplements, alcohol and bronzer. But here’s a first. Manhattan culture retailer The Metropolitan Opera is offering to pay Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino not to attend its performances.
Revealed: James Levine has had two back surgeries since the spring, but is described (by Tom Levine) as “very, very positive and very, very optimistic.” [NYT]
Handel’s Orlando is one of three operas Handel based on episodes from Ariosto’s best-selling sixteenth-century epic, Orlando Furioso. The story was, in 1733, well known throughout the Mediterranean world, and everyone set it to music—Vivaldi’s and Haydn’s settings have enjoyed recent revivals, and the libretto Handel set had originally been devised for Domenico Scarlatti. Intricate…
The controversy over the demise of Brad Wilber‘s Met Futures site goes mainstream, thanks to (who else?) Zachary Woolfe.
La Cieca was cced the following letter sent by a “long-time patron of NYCO” in response to “the recently received Subscription Renewal Brochure.” She has withheld the patron’s name by request.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Poetic license
Poetic license
Parterre Box shines a light on Liparit Avetisyan, who made his Met debut as Alfredo earlier this spring.
Parterre Box shines a light on Liparit Avetisyan, who made his Met debut as Alfredo earlier this spring.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Frau Miina-Liisa will es werde Nacht
Frau Miina-Liisa will es werde Nacht
Parterre Box features soprano Miina-Liisa Värelä, making her title role debut in Die Walküre in Munich next week, in a performance of Tristan und Isolde from 2021.
Parterre Box features soprano Miina-Liisa Värelä, making her title role debut in Die Walküre in Munich next week, in a performance of Tristan und Isolde from 2021.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Lux aeterna luceat eis
Lux aeterna luceat eis
Grand Tier Grab Bag this week honors the late Limmie Pulliam with a bit of his Verdi Requiem.
Grand Tier Grab Bag this week honors the late Limmie Pulliam with a bit of his Verdi Requiem.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Kathryn the great
Kathryn the great
Parterre Box previews Kathryn Lewek‘s upcoming Salome with clips of her as another unhinged lady of antiquity.
Parterre Box previews Kathryn Lewek‘s upcoming Salome with clips of her as another unhinged lady of antiquity.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Count your blessings
Count your blessings
Fast-rising Verdi baritone Ariunbaatar Ganbataar is the subject of this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag.
Fast-rising Verdi baritone Ariunbaatar Ganbataar is the subject of this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
One man’s Junker
One man’s Junker
Handel’s Deidamia — and one of its current champions, soprano Sophie Junker — are the subject of this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag.
Handel’s Deidamia — and one of its current champions, soprano Sophie Junker — are the subject of this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag.
La Cieca invites the cher public to comment, speculate, complain and natter on any and all off-topic subjects during the week of August 15.
Here’s your discussion thread for this morning/afternoon’s webcast of Lohengrin from Bayreuth, cher public. La Cieca herself is grabbing a bite of lunch and will join you later!
“It’s difficult to push a boulder up a hill, recognizing that we’ll never get there,” says George Steel, adding, “If I have to take tomatoes from here to there, I can live with that.” For a translation of that poetic flight of fancy, La Cieca has resorted to Josephine Baker, after the jump.
La Cieca (not pictured) dons her “early adopter” hat once again as she prepares to watch the live telecast of Lohengrin from the Bayreuth Festival on Sunday. It’s an online pay-per-view event (a ticket is €14.90), though the presenters promise it can alternatively be watched “on demand at a time of your own choice between…
This just landed in La Cieca’s inbox: “We regret to inform you that Lyric Opera of Chicago season is in peril. Yesterday Lyric advised us that if we do not accept their one year demand for a two week reduction of employment, an elimination of wage parity with the orchestra, and an additional 5.2 %…
Those of you who feel like an idiot for missing the previous blind item (about how the Met has managed to wriggle out of a contract and say “good day!” to a disastrous co-production) should now spring to attention and clear your minds for a clue about the identity of the director scheduled for his…
La Cieca just stumbled across this casting call for “puppeteers.”
Musical theater doyen Stephen Sondheim is not amused by plans to “revamp” (or, La Cieca might venture to pun, “devamp”) Porgy and Bess, thus “to transform the classic 1935 opera into a commercial Broadway musical.” La Cieca thinks this controversy will make for a very interesting sidebar in the ongoing Regie debate.
Talk of the Town
The Talk of the Town
Andrée Esposito and Alain Vanzo should have made it to the Met
Andrée Esposito and Alain Vanzo should have made it to the Met
This Mireille duet unites Andrée Esposito and Alain Vanzo and shows the timbral and stylistic qualities that made them exemplary.
This Mireille duet unites Andrée Esposito and Alain Vanzo and shows the timbral and stylistic qualities that made them exemplary.
The Talk of the Town
Ebe Stignani and Anita Cerquetti should have made it to the Met
Ebe Stignani and Anita Cerquetti should have made it to the Met
Subtlety is for cowards, say the blazing Anita Cerquetti and the blaring Ebe Stignani.
Subtlety is for cowards, say the blazing Anita Cerquetti and the blaring Ebe Stignani.
The Talk of the Town
Sena Jurinac should have made it to the Met
Sena Jurinac should have made it to the Met
Sena Jurinac, a celebrated Mozart and Strauss singer here as the Composer, a signature role.
Sena Jurinac, a celebrated Mozart and Strauss singer here as the Composer, a signature role.
The Talk of the Town
Janet Baker should have made it to the Met
Janet Baker should have made it to the Met
The divine Dame Janet Baker never sang at the Metropolitan, sadly for American audiences.
The divine Dame Janet Baker never sang at the Metropolitan, sadly for American audiences.
The Talk of the Town
Dorothy Maynor should have made it to the Met
Dorothy Maynor should have made it to the Met
We had to wait for Marian Anderson to break the color barrier at the Met and many great Black opera singers never had a chance there.
We had to wait for Marian Anderson to break the color barrier at the Met and many great Black opera singers never had a chance there.
The Talk of the Town
Leyla Gencer should have made it to the Met
Leyla Gencer should have made it to the Met
Leyla Gencer had a long European career but never sang at the Met.
Leyla Gencer had a long European career but never sang at the Met.
La Cieca hears that parterre fave David Daniels will get all eponymous and stuff for a world premiere opera entitled Oscar, based on the life of Oscar Wilde, for Santa Fe Opera in 2013, with Opera Company of Philadelphia to follow. The work is to boast music by Theodore Morrison and a libretto and stage…
When sending out CDs to for me to review, our doyenne could not know that I have a fetish for 1950s vintage import LP jackets. I remember combing through the LP bins gazing admiringly at the import disks of a generation of middle-European singers who I was too young to have heard in person, who…
After 15 years of astoundingly accurate forecasts of future Met seasons, the invaluable resource by Brad Wilber has been, apparently, permanently expunged from the internet. Those of you who, like La Cieca, will cherish the last bits of wisdom from this site may want to download and save this PDF of the most recent cached…
If you are going to cut something, you cut someone else’s off-topic discussion, not mine!
Our own JJ (not pictured) received a belated birthday present in the form of an excerpt from last night’s concert in Vienna in which Anna Netrebko spreads her wings for a performance of “D’amor sull’ali rosee,” assisted by the luxe Manrico of Jonas Kaufmann.
Santa Fe has done a brave and laudable thing is presenting the first major revival of The Last Savage in decades, and if the libretto were, perhaps, translated into Hindu, the production values, excellence of cast, and directorial choices could conceivably work their magic of, if not pulling a rabbit out of a hat, then…
That hunch you had was right: that very badly reviewed co-production is no longer on the Met’s future schedule. An American director is taking on what may be a fool’s errand of bringing this classic to the stage.
Scanning this summer’s Mostly Mozart schedule one wondered if New York really needed another Don Giovanni right now? And one with a non-starry cast where the best-known name was the Commendatore, Kristinn Sigmundsson?
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