La vie en rose
“As Ernesto, Barry Banks struggled against an allergic reaction and a humiliatingly camp pink get-up…” [The Telegraph]
Recent Stories
The law of diminishing divas
La Cieca invites the cher public to act as blue-ribbon panel in selecting the singers to be included in the “Greatest Diva” study. Voting after the jump.
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).
Par le Regie et par l’opulence
In a whole month of guessing at our most recent Regie quiz, only Melot’s Younger Brother and PirateJenny were able to narrow in on what is after all a very fringey part of the opera repertoire: Graun’s Montezuma, with a libretto by Frederick the Great. (The work was directed for the Edinburgh International Festival by […]
Capitol punishment
When Hans Von Bülow joked that Rienzi was Meyerbeer’s best opera, he was not very far off the mark. In fact, Rienzi, der Letze der Tribunen, Wagner’s third opera, has all the traits of a typical “grand opéra”: it is divided in five acts, features a historical character or situation, makes large use of the […]
How much is that puppy in the window?
At the request of a member of the cher public, La Cieca has updated the Little Shop of Arias store here at parterre. Available for preorder from amazon.com are such goodies as a new DVD of I puritani starring Nino Machaidze and Juan Diego Flórez.
Einspring is in the air
American soprano Ailyn Perez made her Royal Opera debut last night on the company’s tour in Japan, singing two-thirds of the role of Violetta when the scheduled soprano, Ermonela Jaho, canceled after a rocky first act. (Jaho herself was a late substitute for the ever more elusive Angela Gheorghiu.) A witness to the performance says, […]
The return of Unnatural Acts of Opera
After years (or was it months) wandering der Irrnis und der Leiden Pfade, La Cieca has returned to the broadcast booth for another episode of Unnatural Acts of Opera.
October song
Readers of parterre.com are, La Cieca calculates, about six weeks ahead of the curve, so your doyenne figures you are ready to hear what will likely be a major scoop in the New York Times a few days prior to Halloween. It’s about the technical rehearsals for the Met’s season opener Das Rheingold, and what is […]
Saturday’s chat works hard for his living
Betsy’s recovered (if you can call it that) from last weekend’s marathon, and apparently game for more. If you’re feeling likewise, the meeting is at the usual location.
Stuffed avvocato
UPDATE: The Royal Opera has apologized to Intermezzo!
A denomination of divas
La Cieca was delighted, amused and infuriated (three of her favorite emotions) when she read yet another wonderful piece over at The Awl yesterday, a statistical analysis determining The Greatest Diva of the Past 25 Years. This treatise, by one Jay Caspian Kang, was limited in scope to ladies inhabiting the realm of popular music, […]
Nun zäume dein Ross!
When Peter Gelb really wants an artist at the Met, he pulls out all the stops. La Cieca hears that Bryn Terfel, on his way back to New York after a brief visit with his family back in Wales, arrived at the airport in the UK this morning only to discover he left his passport […]
The art of the non sequitur
La Cieca wishes she could write a caption so deadpan.
That is what fiction means
“As beautiful as her singing was, [Renata Scotto] never was much of an actress.” — Lotfi Mansouri: An Operatic Journey
Royal Hunt
Les Troyens is one of those things, or often two of those things, that should be a big event or it practically needn’t happen at all.* The keynote is grandiosity in the best way, from the subject to the musical demands (let’s include the implicit challenge of one singer performing both Cassandre and Didon—not because […]
Good morning!
Sunday challenge: can you name the two obvious errors (of omission) in human physiology within the first 90 seconds of this scene from Rigoletto?
What happens in San Francisco stays in San Francisco
“It is in the Wagner repertory that Ms. Brewer has truly frustrated her fans. She has sung Isolde magnificently, though so far only in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s ‘Tristan Project,’ which used Bill Viola’s videos, while Ms. Brewer and the other lead singers performed as in a concert, with music stands and vocal scores.” [NYT]
Questo e quello
Friendly correspondent Kalena (not pictured) reports that (so far as she can make out) the telecast of the Mantua Rigoletto this weekend will in fact be viewable here in the US. Her email and La Cieca’s attempt to figure out time zones after the jump.
Person to person
Finally, the background to the story that rocked the operatic world earlier this summer. Peter Stein withdrew from the Met’s Boris Godunov “because he felt offended by his treatment at the United States Consulate in Berlin when he applied for a work visa and by a lack of sympathy from Peter Gelb, the Met’s general […]
Deck, ya know
Real estate news from San Francisco: the Potrero Hill home of the late Blanche Thebom, which “includes a very spacious living room that opens onto a large view deck,” is now for sale. [SocketSite]
Six of one
In a development likely to elicit from aficionados of the tenor voice a resounding “meh,” Dimitri Pittas has withdrawn from all scheduled performances of Verdi’s Macbeth at Lyric Opera of Chicago, to be replaced by Italo-Nutleyite sensation Leonardo Capalbo (pictured).
“Ghosts” of honor
John Corigliano‘s first and second symphonies won the Grawemeyer and the Pulitzer, respectively; the premiere of his Third Symphony wasn’t even reviewed by the Times. His score for The Red Violin won an Oscar™; his score for Edge of Darkness ended up on the cutting room floor. Is there an American composer at once more […]
Mehta: “Bondi is shameless”
During rehearsals for the upcoming Rigoletto from Mantova, Zubin Mehta attacks Sandro Bondi, Berlusconi’s Minister of Culture. Mehta is angry, and by his own admission, he becomes “cattivo”, nasty, when speaking about the financial cuts of the Berlusconi government in the opera houses.