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Before the Los Angeles Ring cycle has even begun, two of the leading singers have thrown director Achim Freyer under the bus. Particular non-collegial is leather-larynxed heldentenor John Treleaven, who blames his crappy singing on the production, but the mot du jour is: “Domingo was out of town and unavailable to answer questions.” [Los Angeles…
On the other hand, only moments ago La Cieca got a call from member of the cher public who gushed, “I just heard the greatest ‘Egli vede ch’io piango!’ ever!”
La Cieca doesn’t want her cher public to scatter to the four winds just because the Met’s broadcast season has drawn to a close. So let’s choose an internet radio broadcast to enjoy (and to discuss) next Saturday.
“The Met at this point is not a place where even a talented opera director can make good, strong work, let alone a place where a director inexperienced with the genre — as so many of Mr. Gelb’s favored artists are — can be guided toward an understanding of it.” Gadfly-at-large Zachary Woolfe takes “A…
La Cieca is happy to announce that voting season has begun for the 2010 first annual parterre box awards for excellence and repugnance in operatic production and performance during the 2009-2010 season. And now, here’s your chance to choose among this year’s nominees for the “Lorgnette d’Or.”
The DVD of the 1980 Met telecast of Lulu is now on sale!
See, La Cieca thinks Brian Kellow is asking for trouble when, in the second paragraph of his analysis of last March’s Slatkinshchina, he admits, “I did not attend the March 29 opening-night performance of La Traviata, nor did I listen to it on Sirius Radio.”
“I hate musicals. Why doesn’t the opera bother me?” The first visit to the Met with an enthusiastic host, here enacted by The Awl‘s lavishly-bemiddlenamed Mary HK Choi and Seth Colter Walls (of whom more soon). Photo: Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Don’t cry because it’s over
Don’t cry because it’s over
Grand Tier Grab Bag hearkens back to the days when Sondra Radvanovsky — who is singing no Verdi at all next season — seemed like the Verdi soprano of reference.
Grand Tier Grab Bag hearkens back to the days when Sondra Radvanovsky — who is singing no Verdi at all next season — seemed like the Verdi soprano of reference.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Rizzin’ to the occasion
Rizzin’ to the occasion
Parterre Box features the Met’s current Eugene Onegin, Iurii Samoilov, in a performance of Rossini ahead of a return to Pesaro this summer.
Parterre Box features the Met’s current Eugene Onegin, Iurii Samoilov, in a performance of Rossini ahead of a return to Pesaro this summer.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
When they go low
When they go low
Nostalgic for bass month, Parterre Box offers excerpts from two young basses to watch: Giorgi Manoshvili and Patrick Guetti.
Nostalgic for bass month, Parterre Box offers excerpts from two young basses to watch: Giorgi Manoshvili and Patrick Guetti.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Nailin’ the coughin’
Nailin’ the coughin’
Rosa Feola, still scheduled for a run of performances as Violetta in New York this spring, is the subject of this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag.
Rosa Feola, still scheduled for a run of performances as Violetta in New York this spring, is the subject of this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Landing the plane
Landing the plane
With Nixon, Klinghoffer, and Andris Nelsons on the mind, Parterre Box offers a recording of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s recent John Adams outing.
With Nixon, Klinghoffer, and Andris Nelsons on the mind, Parterre Box offers a recording of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s recent John Adams outing.
Grand Tier Grab Bag
Le galant tireur
Le galant tireur
American tenor Charles Castronovo performs a bit of Weber’s Der Freischütz ahead of the opportunity to hear Berlioz‘s take on the score at Carnegie Hall next week.
American tenor Charles Castronovo performs a bit of Weber’s Der Freischütz ahead of the opportunity to hear Berlioz‘s take on the score at Carnegie Hall next week.
While we’re waiting for further news on the final Tosca of the Met season, La Cieca suggests we consider the diva and the non-diva, on the other side of the jump.
Our own JJ reviews the Met’s Lulu. [NYP]
Well done, Jim: the opera in question was indeed Fidelio, and La Cieca has no idea what that horse is all about either. Better you should ask Benedikt von Peter, who directed it for the Komische Oper Berlin. And while you’re at it, maybe he’ll offer a guess or two what’s going on after the…
So the drama continues. After the first act, the conductor summons the Decider to his dressing room to complain that the prima donna has made an unmusical mess of the opera thus far.
Welcome to the Saturday afternoon chat about Alban Berg‘s Lulu, as broadcast from the Met beginning at 1:00 pm.
To be, or not to be? This is the question. But for the producers of opera on DVD, the question is really, to be an opera or to be a film. The producers of the 1991 DVD of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito as produced by Glyndebourne that same year seemed to have been sitting…
Don’t worry: no clips from The Music Lovers to mark the 170th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Instead, after the jump, a treat from the summer of 2009.
Carl Orff’s 1949 opera (or quasi-opera, as some critics have called it) Antigonae has been issued on 2 CDs on the Profil label, in a Munich radio recording from 1958. This recording, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and featuring the German soprano Martha Mödl in the title role, is a most welcome addition to this work’s…
Talk of the Town
The Talk of the Town
A favorite Verdi performance from Tildy Diva
A favorite Verdi performance from Tildy Diva
A well-known Met Aïda with a starry cast from 1967 is TildyDiva’s Favorite Verdi Performance
A well-known Met Aïda with a starry cast from 1967 is TildyDiva’s Favorite Verdi Performance
The Talk of the Town
A favorite Verdi performance from Arrigo
A favorite Verdi performance from Arrigo
My favorite Verdi performance is Claudio Abbado Don Carlo opening of the Scala.
My favorite Verdi performance is Claudio Abbado Don Carlo opening of the Scala.
The Talk of the Town
A favorite Verdi performance from Peter Russell
A favorite Verdi performance from Peter Russell
The purely musical performance preserved here is thrilling, ratcheted to a higher intensity than the Deutsche Grammophon studio recording
The purely musical performance preserved here is thrilling, ratcheted to a higher intensity than the Deutsche Grammophon studio recording
The Talk of the Town
A favorite Verdi performance from TC
A favorite Verdi performance from TC
Victoria de los Ángeles has always been my Violetta of choice, a portrayal that never ceases to move me.
Victoria de los Ángeles has always been my Violetta of choice, a portrayal that never ceases to move me.
The Talk of the Town
A favorite Verdi performance from Anna Netrebko
A favorite Verdi performance from Anna Netrebko
I feel that the best years of Maria Callas’s vocalità, when we hear such a unique freedom and generosity in her singing, were captured in her early recordings.
I feel that the best years of Maria Callas’s vocalità, when we hear such a unique freedom and generosity in her singing, were captured in her early recordings.
The Talk of the Town
A favorite Verdi performance from Armerjacquino
A favorite Verdi performance from Armerjacquino
Before the screams of horror begin, it says ‘favorite’, not best.
Before the screams of horror begin, it says ‘favorite’, not best.
La Cieca presents the first in a series of speculations why seemingly talented and well-respected artists don’t get hired — or rehired — by the Met.
Wearing her own hair (in a Zeffirelli production!) and sounding fabulous: a snippet of Anna Netrebko‘s Micaëla from Vienna on May 3.
Legendary mezzo-soprano Giulietta Simionato died this morning. She was 99. [Corriere della Sera]
La Cieca has it on good authority that the new music director for the Santa Fe Opera will be Frédéric Chaslin (not pictured), who will preside over a 2011 season featuring Faust, La Boheme, Vivaldi’s Griselda, Wozzeck, and (you guessed it) The Last Savage.
The American coloratura soprano was born May 4, 1930.
“I’m not advocating a tonal takeover of opera, I would just like there to be a little more space for opera as entertainment. Brahms made room for Strauss Jr, Wagner for Rossini, and I think there’s enough room for me now, God knows its not too crowded or anything.” [Times Online]
Reviewing a CD of someone you have never heard live is always a dicey proposition. As we all know, a voice sounds very different in a big hall than it does up-close and personal. So if Marc Hervieux is your favorite new tenor, please don’t put me in the “crosshairs” just yet. I freely admit…
UPDATE: Tonight’s performance of Simon Boccanegra at La Scala (featuring Placido Domingo) has been canceled because of a strike called by unions protesting the “decreto Bondi,” a measure to privatize all of Italy’s major opera houses and reduce salaries at these theaters across the board. Our Own Ercole Farnese reviewed yesterday’s news reports about this…
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