Happy Birthday Shirley Verrett
The American mezzo-soprano and soprano is 79 years old today.
Recent Stories
Quel grido e quella morte
Maria Guleghina‘s Turandot on PBS right now, and, holy hell, I didn’t realize just how incredibly awful it sounded. How could anyone let such a thing be released — no, escape — on HD?
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).
Barge and in charge
Some things, like hearing an evening of chamber music on a barge in the East River, sound better on paper than they actually are. And some things work exactly the opposite way: for example, the composer David del Tredici. Bargemusic presented soprano Courtenay Budd in a program of two song cycles from the 1990s by […]
General Tso’s regie
It truly is a red-letter day when La Cieca manages to propose a Regie quiz that fails to elicit from you clever pusses even a single correct guess. Last week’s opera was something of a double whammy, as it consisted of a modern piece produced in a non-traditional manner. Enough suspense: the work was Henze’s […]
Downstage
Some of you may remember a few weeks ago comments veered off into a discussion of relative sizes of 19th century theaters vs. modern opera houses and, specifically, the issue of a stage apron, a playing area that extended past the proscenium into the auditorium proper, therefore allowing singers to take advantage of warmer acoustics […]
2010 season officially begins
Carlos Álvarez has withdrawn from the Metropolitan Opera’s January 2011 performances of Rigoletto. Veteran Verdian Leo Nucci will take on the title role for these five performances, including the Saturday broadcast.
Toll und blind item
Which singer was not unwell when he withdrew “because of illness” from that production already rife with cancellations, but rather was fired because he had not yet mastered his music?
Slow news day: Brit scribe whores himself
“I’m a contrarian! We contrarians question everything! The only thing we contrarians never question is the cheques we collect for writing our silly bloody contrarian codswallop! Oh, bugger those silly toffs in their poofy frocks! Cheque, please!” [The Guardian]
I’d like to propose a cast
“…Tony Award winners Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch have been approached to succeed Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, respectively, in the roles of the captivating actress Desirée Armfeldt and her worldly-wise mother Madame Armfeldt.” [Playbill]
Death, warmed over
“The end of the world was on the program Thursday night — but for the New York Philharmonic, performing the apocalyptic opera Le Grand Macabre was a promising new beginning.” [NYP]
…the Boulder Dam look like an egg cup!
La Cieca has just heard from one of her habitually infallible moles that the refitting of the Met’s stages for the Robert Lepage Ring began today.
Fasten your seat belts
“I would only ask if there is any director who stays every day in the place he works,” Mr. Domingo said, his voice rising. [Wall Street Journal]
Exotica
Chandos has issued an excellent new CD of Serge Rachmaninoff‘s one-act opera Aleko, written when the composer was only nineteen as a graduation exercise for the Moscow Conservatory.
Ferry tale
One of parterre box’s oldest friends and earliest admirers, Der Schmuck der Madonna, emerges from his regal exile momentarily to plug what sounds like a memorable way to spend part of Memorial Day weekend:
The hits just keep on coming
… and the hope gets darker and darker as La Scoopenda performs Leonard Cohen‘s “Hallelujah.”
Questioning Peter Gelb
“Featured Doer” Peter Gelb is one of 15 candidates for a video interview in the HuffPost Spotlight Series. Go to the Peter Gelb page at Huffington Post and leave a question (or three) for him. The five “doers” with the most questions asked will submit to a video interview!
Happy Birthday Beverly Sills!
Belle Miriam “Bubbles” Silverman was born in Brooklyn on May 25, 1929.
RIP Anneliese Rothenberger
The delightful German soprano, who enjoyed a 40 year stage career, died yesterday in Switzerland. She was 83.
Witness for the defense de fumer
The U.S. Supreme Court will let stand a Colorado law that bans actors and actresses from smoking while performing their roles on stage. The Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act applies to all theatrical performances, including that smokiest of all operas, Carmen. [allvoices.com]
The Meistersinger The
Someone or something in Cincinnati doesn’t want Die Meistersinger to happen. Today, three more cancellations were announced, including Thomas Allen (Beckmesser) and Evgeny Nikitin (Pogner). [Cincinnati.com]
On wings of Regie
Finally, finally La Cieca devised a Regie quiz that really put the cher public on their mettle, and in fact, the only one of you even to narrow in on the right answer was 79CXR, whose wild guesses included a direct hit. The opera was Handel’s Hercules, as directed for the Luzerner Theater by Dominique […]
Things never change, Jo
In a tidbit sure to warm the cockles of Our Own Vicar of John Wakefield, beloved artist Dame Josephine Barstow will return to the ‘boards’ of the Gran Teatre de Liceu in April 2011. The legendary septuagenarian singing actress will be heard in the pivotal rôle of “Mummy Lucy” in Richard Jones‘s inscenation of Rustic Chivalry.
Happy Birthday, Richard Wagner
The Wizard of Bayrueth was born in Leipzig on May 22, 1813. La Cieca invites the cher public to celebrate Wagner’s mastery of the music drama with selections from his Werk.