Congratulations Angela Meade
La Cieca hears that soprano Angela Meade has been named the winner of the 2011 Richard Tucker Award. (Photo: Marty Sohl, Metropolitan Opera)
Recent Stories
Make a wish
“Everyone now tiptoes around James Levine, with breath held and fingers crossed waiting for the next health update. He has already received ecstatic notices in some quarters for this performance, but to my ears that is either misplaced charity or simply wishful thinking….
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).
Mind over Mater
It’s Holy Week (as I write) and I just received this new CD from our Doyenne. Good timing. For the concert stage (and the opera house), I think of Pergolesi as essentially a one-hit wonder (each). I won’t pretend to know his opera buffa, La Serva Padrona, let alone hide the fact that I drove right […]
Liberté, égalité, cécité!
Which opera company had its mettle tested by a coup d’état last week, only to see the upsurper barred because he already puts the lion’s share of his attention elsewhere?
The art of making art
In this new Decca DVD of Tosca we find a highly intellectual, even fascinating staging at odds with the visceral nature of the original melodrama but one that inspires its cast to great heights. Robert Carsen is a clever producer with an elegant visual palette. He employs the same directorial strategy as his famous Mefistofele […]
Put a “Ring” on it
“Director Robert Lepage’s obsession with eye-popping visuals showed little concern for the work’s complex intellectual and moral dimensions.” [New York Post]
Salo, me
David McVicar’s ravishingly lurid 2008 production of Strauss’s Salome for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden has been issued as an HD-filmed DVD from Opus Arte. Now, Strauss’s music is ravishingly lurid on its own, so I came to this production, which claims as a visual source reference the Pasolini film Salo, The 120 Days […]
Ein Chat verhieß mir der Vater
When La Cieca is asked the secret of a successful chat for the opening night of Die Walküre at the Met, her answer is “a comfortable desk chair.” And so, wishing you, the cher public, the best of luck with your Sitzfleisch, here are the details for tonight’s chat, which begins at 6:30 pm.
“Nor women’s matters, but with awl”
“Not unlike Calisto and Linfea, two of the nymphs in Cavalli’s 1651 opera La Calisto who inhabit the Arcadia under the spell of the goddess Diana, we meet at river banks, so to speak, and feed each other’s adoration for the Huntress.” Bloggress Lydia Perovi? discusses the “Otter effect” on “relatively reasonable” gay women at […]
Ring commitment?
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke is the frontrunner to direct the 2013 Bayreuth Ring, Handelsblatt reports. (If the name sounds familiar, it may be because Haneke was announced to direct Cosi fan tutte at NYCO during the 2012 season projected by Gerard Mortier.) Dark horses for the prestigious Green Hill gig include Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck […]
Brittania rule the lake
Houston Grand Opera’s Brit-in-Chief Anthony Freud will take an early departure of his post (recently extended to 2015) to move into the power vacuum created by the departure of William Mason from Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2012, says Culturemap Houston.
Ghost of a chance
“First witches, now ghosts. But while Broadway’s Wicked proved golden for Stephen Schwartz, his Séance on a Wet Afternoon came up lifeless and damp Tuesday night at its City Opera premiere.” [New York Post] (Photo: Carol Rosegg)
Tour de force
It’s official: Peter Gelb says the Met is going to Japan! [Wall Street Journal]
Spy-jo-to-ho!
You really didn’t think your doyenne would let a top-secret dress rehearsal at the Met slip away without getting an exclusive on-the-scene report for you, the cher public? Now, did you? Well, if you did, you’re wrong, because La Cieca’s mole (pictured) has filed the following report:
Parole parole parole
Our Own JJ (not pictured) gets the Staatsoper Stuttgart experience off his chest, to the tune of about 4,000 words, in his new blog post at Musical America. Included is a massive and (one hopes) final deconstruction of the Calixto Bieito Parsifal.
Been there, did it
The word traditional, when used to describe opera productions can imply a certain setting, costuming, stage action, or even overall dramatic conception (or lack thereof). Tradition at its best can provide a straightforward backdrop for the genius of a work to unfold, and at its worst weigh an opera down with outdated and vapid conventions. […]
Release the koken
Which regisseur might as well have chosen to put his stagehands in traditional Noh costumes, since (what with the mammoth technical problems associated with this production) it has become obvious that, come opening night, the scene-shifters are going to be almost as visible as the singers?
For the birds
Die Zauberflöte is a perennial favorite with audiences, and modern productions have attracted top singers and production teams. Yet every production struggles with the performance text, particularly with the issues of race and sex. The dreams of the Enlightenment may be lovely, but the social mores of their dreamers have not aged gracefully. Despite a […]
Hard gore
“In New York… opera directors don’t matter so much. In Europe, it’s another story: There, the director’s curtain call provokes the wildest excitement of the night.” The long-awaited “Regie” piece by Our Own JJ appears in the New York Post.
Open mouthed
An exciting album of photos from Stefan Herheim‘s new production of Salome that opened tonight at the Salzburg Easter Festival. (All images by Monika & Karl Forster).
Ye gods!
La Cieca has just learned that Bryn Terfel will sing the role of Scarpia for this evening’s performance of Tosca,replacing James Morris, who is ill and withdrew early this afternoon. Terfel, who is of course in the city rehearsing the Met’s new production of Die Walküre, was in the audience for this afternoon’s performance of Wozzeck, where […]
The Regiecycle Diaries
Only a few scant guesses at the most recent Regie quiz, and, alas, no one got even close, though perhaps that’s because some of our strongest players disqualified themselves, having seeing this production of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, as directed for the English National Opera by Benedict Andrews. Our next puzzler will be perhaps […]
Immer chat! Immer chat!
Where better to be on a lovely spring afternoon that chatting about Wozzeck? Well, admittedly the subject matter doesn’t quite scream “April,” but the superb musical values of the Met’s current revival are worth yet another hearing. For the 1:00 pm chat, details may be found after the jump.