For the first time in ages, a Regie production has managed to stump the panel! La Cieca will turn over all the cards and reveal to you that last week’s Regie quiz represented Haydn’s L’isola disabitata. You should have been able to figure that one out because the photographs depicted no desert island and lots […]
Just in time for the holidays, Juan Diego Flórez releases the de rigueur Christmas album every internationally renowned opera star seems to make. Entitled Santo, this CD, like most others of its ilk, is pleasantly entertaining. However, Flórez eschews a straight Christmas album for one composed of a mix of religious standards, carols and eclectic […]
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).
La Cieca is delighted to note that old, old, old friend Brad Wilber (pictured) has relocated to his own niche of the internet. His Met Futures Page (the Necronomicon of opera queenery) may now be found, with the most recent and delicious updates, at bradwilber.com/metfuture.
“After a sketchy start to the season, the Met hit its stride on Friday with a revival of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale that’s as crisp as autumn in New York.” [New York Post] (Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
“Enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music, Mr. Jovanovich also began taking paying jobs around town. His first mention in The New York Times came in a 1996 review of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players in The Gondoliers at Symphony Space. Anthony Tommasini noted Mr. Jovanovich’s bright voice and strapping physique…” [NYT]
Which critic—who has been eagerly spreading the news that NYCO’s A Quiet Place is a masterpiece—was observed snoring through most of the work’s first act?
Once again, La Cieca can do no better than to quote the ineffable BAB, who says, “The beauty of the Saturday afternoon Chats this summer has been that everyone picks what they want and then we compare notes with what’s happening elsewhere. Ordinarily I make no recommendations, but I have decided to do things differently […]
René Pape has withdrawn from La Scala’s season-opening new production of Die Walküre, in what was to have been his role debut as Wotan. Vitalij Kowaljow will substitute. Pape is still scheduled to sing this role at the Berlin Staatsoper in April 2011. It is not clear at this point if Pape’s decision was based […]
In layman’s terms: they have lost their fucking minds. Larger image here.
The original gay pirate is (sort of) 223 years old, since the Prague premiere of Mozart’s masterpiece took place on October 29, 1787.
Our Own JJ‘s heart has been blessed with the sound of Regie, and he’s blogged once more. This time it’s about The Little Foxes at New York Theatre Workshop. [Rough and Regie]
After enjoying the New York City Opera’s current production of A Quiet Place, why not treat yourself to one of the company’s signature cocktails before the long drive home? [Wall Street Journal]
“…incest, gay baiting, draft dodging and drunken driving… it’s hard not to giggle!” Our Own JJ reviews the NYCO’s premiere of A Quiet Place in the New York Post.
Enterprising Manhattan troupe Gotham Chamber Opera will announce tonight their participation in the commission of a new American opera, Dark Sisters, composed by Nico Muhly with libretto by Stephen Karam, conducted by Neal Goren, and directed by Rebecca Taichman.
In 1890 Cavalleria rusticana had taken the whole world by storm and in the next decade or so, hordes of composers, willing or unwillingly, jumped on the Verismo bandwagon. La navarraise (1894) is generally considered Jules Massenet’s homage to the genre, and for a long time the two works were often performed together. Emma Calvé, […]
At long last, complete details on how you, the cher public, can join the party for the First Ever East Coast Parterre Meet and Greet this November 14. Details after the jump.
With the new opera season about to begin in The Venue Formerly Known as The New York State Theater, what better time to recall what else David H. Koch does with his spare billions, i.e., conniving to deprive Americans of affordable healthcare, as well as “to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with […]
On the way to the OONY comeback concert at Carnegie Hall last night, La Cieca ran into an old, old, old and utterly anonymous friend who had recently had a tête-à-tête with an associate of that publicist who recently parted ways with that celebrated Opera MILF. Well!
Which tenor twink was cruising everything in pants in the men’s room at Carnegie Hall tonight? And do you think he will behave thus when he returns to the Met later this season?
Lyric Opera of Chicago has entrusted their new Macbeth to Barbara Gaines, Artistic Director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, whose work can be frustratingly inconsistent. She has directed the finest Troilus and Cressida and the finest King Lear that I have ever seen. Yet her recent work has been filled with wretched excess and effects […]
In Measha Brueggergosman‘s newest DG release, “Night Songs…” Oh… sorry! That was Renée Fleming‘s beautiful 2001 Decca release of similar (occasionally overlapping) material. Let me try that again. “In the Still of Night…” Oh… sorry! That was Anna Netrebko‘s voluptuous CD of Russian songs released earlier this year.
Roberto Alagna, star of tonight’s pair of one-acters by Opera Orchestra of New York, discusses divorce and desserts with Our Own JJ. [New York Post]
First of many to associate our most recent Regie quiz with King Lear was WeillFan. It’s not exactly King Lear, but rather a work called Promised End by Alexander Goehr based upon scenes from the Shakespeare tragedy. This next puzzler is probably not Shakespearian, but then again, La Cieca has been know to be wrong […]
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