Throwing the first chat
Because he’s seeing and reviewing Stiffelio later this week, JJ is recusing himself from tonight’s broadcast. But those of you who feel like discussing, you’ve got here and La Casa della Cieca.
Recent Stories
Hair raising
Katherine Jenkins, C-list Britpop has-beens… and Rolando Villazón in a ginormous jewfro. No, this does not bode well.
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).
Youth will have its chat
Welcome, cher public, to discussion for this afternoon’s Met broadcast of Der Rosenkavalier. The performance begins at 1:00 PM.
“Stiffelio” dress: first report
Member of the cher public Harold informs La Cieca, “The singing is good but the intermissions are too fucking long. The pause was longer than the last scene and the intermission longer than Act 2. I’ll be damned if I’m going to come back for 2 40-minute intermissions and a 10 minute scene change surrounded […]
Happy Birthday Evelyn Lear
The American soprano was born 84 years ago today.
Lady sings the blues
There’s lots of coverage in both Italian and English-language media today about how Franco Zeffirelli (sort of) called Daniela Dessì “fat.” La Cieca chose this one because it had the funniest pictures. [The Telegraph]
Turandon’t
La Cieca listened to Sirius for a while tonight, but then her ears began to bleed. When the best singing comes from Margaret Juntwait… but I gotta tell ya, folks.
Out of ordure
“Ray Dull of Fresno, who recalls in the 1940s hauling manure as a teenager on his family’s Ohio farm as he listened to the Met’s Saturday radio broadcasts, understands the appeal of being up close in the movie theater.” [The Fresno Bee]
Milestone
At exactly 11:18 this morning, parterre.com posted comment number 100,000.
Sock’s appeal
The maniacal laughter of incorrigible NYCO nemesis Manuela Hoelterhoff continues to echo through the halls of Castle Bloomberg this morning, as yet another of the executive editor’s gang of henchscribes gloats over yesterday’s announcement of a curtailed season at the company that dared to snub Francesca Zambello. Poor paltry fools!
Thrift
“Though fine from a distance, the ladies’ costumes (also designed by Howell) had an air of Lisa Kudrow’s character on Friends circa 1994, which means they’ll probably be au courant in a few years.” [Time Out New York]
A Littler “Night Music”
A Little Night Music at the Walter Kerr last night left me longing for a little more than we were given. Yes, there are some wonderful things about this revival of Stephen Sondheim’s most unabashedly romantic musical – and I’ll get to those in a minute – but the sets and costumes by David Farley […]
Leap year
Speaking of people what have “ridden that streetcar,” Antipodean diva Cheryl Barker‘s sudden withdrawal from Opera Australia’s first new production of Tosca in almost three decades seems to be based on her objection to the staging by Christopher Alden.
NYCO “severely curtailing” fall season
“There are thousands of papers, stretching back over hundreds of years, affecting Belle Reve as, piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications — to put it plainly! The four-letter word deprived us of our plantation, till finally all that was left — and […]
Man loves mullet
“And the news of this revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s opulent production continues to be the exciting work of the young Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons, who searches out the modernist touches in Puccini’s final work.” [NYT]
Future tense
La Cieca has just been entrusted with a veritable cornucopia of future lore about our beloved Metropolitan Opera. You must remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future. And what happens in the future stays in the future. Anyway, shall we? La Cieca thought you’d never ask.
The blonde leading the blonde
Separated at a center part: castanet-clicker Elina Garanca and cast-in-XXX-flicker Traci Lords.
Cold cassia files
“Carmen, opera’s favorite bad girl, is sexy, unpredictable and fascinating — everything the Met’s new production of Bizet’s Carmen is not.” [NYP]
After five
Can you really believe it’s been only five years since YouTube was launched? And can you believe that it’s taken all five of those years for the definitive “this is why YouTube was invented” video to show up on the site?
Freestyle Regie
Last week’s Regie quiz can be summed up in three little words: “far too easy!” Practically everybody got it right on the first guess: Die Frau Ohne Schatten, as seen at the Opernhaus Zürich in a production by the hopelessly conventional David Pountney. A somewhat less conventional production of a far less conventional opera follows […]
Nibble nibble mousie, who’s chatting in my housie?
This afternoon’s Met broadcast is Hansel and Gretel, and you know the drill about the rest. The performance starts at 1:00 pm.
Out of the past
Since I had already gotten my Hanukah gift this year (my Nikon D3000 DSLR), I was surprised to receive a box from my sister this past week. One of the gifts inside was Les Urnes de l’Opera, a collection of arias and scenes recorded shortly after the turn of the last century and buried in […]
Votre chat, je peux vous le rendre
The last parterre chat of 2009, Carmen from the Met, begins at 6:00 pm for a 6:30 curtain.