I would never have imagined that the story of Anna Nicole Smith could be today’s entry in a long line of opera’s “fallen women”—pop culture’s reinvention of Violetta, Manon Lescaut, and Lulu. But that is indeed what composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas have created in Anna Nicole, commissioned by England’s Royal Opera House […]
Smartly done, cher diseur de bons mots: Monsieur Hoffmann rightly guessed last week’s puzzler to be Don Giovanni. The production by Doris Dörrie is currently playing the Staatsoper Hamburg. Elsewhere, the Regie never stops, as you will see after the jump.
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).
So Placido Domingo was all like, “Oh, that Anne Midgette is just a mean girl and she is SO JELLUS,” and then Anne was like, “Actually, nuh-uh, maestro, I’m so not.”
Today Our Own Betsy inaugurates the F-K* rating system (*for “F-fete K-nives.”)
La Cieca had never really considered before the possibility that Peter Gelb was a Harry Potter villain, but this image from Channel 13’s Sunday Arts certainly does make one wonder.
“On Thursday, November 17 at 7:30 p.m. in Zankel Hall, the Carnegie Hall Notables—a membership and ticket program for music enthusiasts in their 20s and 30s—will host Love Letters, a performance of contemporary American playwright A. R. Gurney’s work. Celebrated soprano Renée Fleming and award-winning actor Alec Baldwin will perform the piece as directed by […]
“Pets are not mentioned.” [Bloomberg Businessweek]
“Anna Bolena… opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday in a new production featuring Anna Netrebko and two handsome Irish wolfhounds who helped us get through one very tedious scene.” (Bloomberg News, Manuela Hoelterhoff)
Deutsche Grammophon has a new hunk on the market, ignoring the fact that he’s been around for twenty years. Ildebrando d’Arcangelo has been steadily building a career since the early 90s, getting a reputation as a reliable, intelligent artist with a supple bass-baritone. He has a lengthy career of singing with the greats under his […]
“Queen Anna is dead — long live Queen Anna! The late royal lady is Anna Bolena in Donizetti’s 1830 opera, based on the final days of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. The new monarch — ruling not over England but the Met — is Anna Netrebko, whose radiant performance at the company’s opening […]
Tonight’s the night, cher public, traditionally the busiest of the year here at parterre. Complete details on the opening night performance of Anna Bolena after the jump.
As several of you were sharp-eyed enough to notice (and sharp-tongued enough to mention), our previous Regie quiz was in fact a repeat, and La Cieca is sorry to say it looks like a production that hardly deserved a reprise: Rossini’s Semiramide directed by Nigel Lowery. A new and different challenge to your sleuthing skills […]
Mesdames, messieurs, and others: here it is, your weekly chance to shine in off-topic badinage, chitchat, persiflage, raillery, repartee and small talk.
Awesome Anita Rachvelishvili (top) will be the Principessa di Bouillon opposite the Maurizio of Jonas Kaufmann (bottom) and—presumably—Angela Gheorghiu in the title role of Adriana Lecouvreur for Opera Orchestra of New York on November 8, or as we call in here at parterre, “Die Nacht des Sternstunden.”
“’I never understood why’… Men take steroids. I mean ok, it makes you big and buff, but it shrinks your penis. I mean ok, the muscles attract the women, but at the end of the night, aren’t they embarrassed?” [Playbill Arts] “Some in the business call it ‘Peter’s Dilemma’.” [New York Times]
Our Own Betsy (pictured) shrieks, “WELCOME TO THE DARK SIDE ! A whole afternoon full of really bad bargains with the King of the Underworld.”
La Cieca is delighted to announce that after a long absence Our Own JJ (not pictured) has returned to the pages of Musical America with another entry in his “Rough and Regie” blog— this time comparing Atys with Follies.
Yes, yes, La Cieca realizes that parterre has gone “All Anna All the Time,” but, hey, she’s opening the Met season in a company premiere, plus we like her. Anyway, La Netrebko is profiled, covered, revealed, reported, what she eats and when and where, whom she knows and where she was and when and where […]
Deutsche Grammophon has just released Anna Netrebko: Live at the Metropolitan Opera, a CD with 11 excerpts recorded live from her Met performances from 2002 through 2010. Released to feature the soprano just prior to her opening in the Met’s Anna Bolena, the CD features Netrebko singing solo arias as well as duets with such […]
Here, on what appears to have been a rather chilly evening, are Michael Fabiano and his “mom” Renée Fleming in Die Walküre Lucrezia Borgia at the San Francisco Opera.
Today is the dress rehearsal/preview of Anna Bolena at the Met, and naturally La Cieca has infiltrated the event with a veritable phalanx of spies. After the jump: all your latest Anna Netrebko related news.
“Sony Classical is proud to announce the signing of an exclusive recording contract with Plácido Domingo. This new agreement brings the legendary singer back to the company where his unparalleled recording career started in the late 1960s. Sony Classical’s catalog boasts many of his milestone recordings, and the renewed collaboration between Mr. Domingo and the […]
I have been tossing and turning over La Cieca’s most recent assignment for me: a CD of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer based on a performance live in concert from November 13, 2010. The anxiety mainly stems from the fact that, horror to say, I am no Wagnerite. I know that sect of opera buffs has […]
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