Squirrel is using his Parterre Pulpit to make a pitch. If the Met wants to produce a work that has never been seen in New York, they could do worse than a new production of Carl Nielsen‘s excellent comic opera Maskarade. It’s easy listening for sure, melodically akin to La boheme or Lehar, but marked […]
The freshest imaginable gay hell in the December issue of Vogue: a fashion shoot based on the Richard Jones/Met production of Hansel and Gretel — with Lady Gaga in the Philip Langridge part! Plus… Annie Leibovitz! Grace Coddington! Marc Jacobs! Cate Blanchett! Oh, you know you want to know what’s after the jump!
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).
The Berlin Philharmonic brought a spooky Halloween treat to New York on Thursday night, just a few days late. They are at Carnegie Hall for a three-night residency, offering the complete Brahms symphonies along with selected earlier works by that ugly duckling of Brahms disciples, Arnold Schoenberg. They are also far from home during Berlin’s […]
Cher public, if you plan to see the Met’s production of From the House of the Dead (and you might as well know that she expects you move heaven and earth to do so!), La Cieca urges and entreats that you avoid reading Anthony Tommasini‘s review of the production in tomorrow’s New York Times.
Two Faces of Diva Renée Fleming on DVD. (And here La Cieca thought it would be a documentary about cosmetic surgery!)
La Cieca invites all you Deadheads to chat during tonight’s Met season premiere of From the House of the Dead. The chat begins at 7:45 pm. Sirius/XM RealNetworks from metopera.org
The premiere of Hugo Weisgall’s 1993 Esther at New York City Opera occupied my mind for several days – though maybe not for the best reasons. As I wrote earlier, it is a work that emanates, belatedly, from what might be called The Twelve-Tone Industrial Complex, that uptown conservatory lobby of the 1950s and 60s, which was […]
Siegfried Wagner ‘s 1903 opera Der Kobold (The Goblin) is a fascinating yet infuriating work. It often seems as if both music and libretto were written by a committee that couldn’t come to agreement. The plot structure careens wildly from realism to mysticism to symbolism; the music hops from style to style and influence to […]
Our Own JJ interviews the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb in today’s New York Post.
¡Mira! Mean, moody magnificent Manuela Trasobares!
La Cieca reminds the cher public that tomorrow evening will be the Metropolitan Opera premiere of From the House of the Dead, an event to be Sirius’d and RealPlayered beginning at 8:00 pm. And naturally you all are invited to listen and discuss here at your favorite virtual venue. Check back tomorrow evening for chat […]
Raina Kabaivanska sings in a film by Patrice Chéreau.
“Beefcake and hamantaschen may seem an odd menu, but in the New York City Opera’s first season in two years, they somehow make a balanced meal.” [NY Post]
“People are on the way to check on Marguerite, after hearing that a man has been seen in her area.”
There are several reasons to purchase the new DVD of Die Meistersinger from Vienna (EuroArts EUA 2072488), but the main one is Christian Thielemann. This production will most likely come to be known as “Thielemann’s Meistersinger,” because his sense of the overall architecture of the work is, pardon the pun, masterful.
The day after opening the 2009-10 season with Hugo Weisgall’s Esther, New York City opera presented one of the most beloved operas in the entire repertoire, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in a new production by Christopher Alden.
“Mr. Okulitch and Mr. Hardy have matching black briefs over which they each wear half of a single suit: Giovanni, the jacket; Leporello, the pants. When they switch identities, they trade suit parts, again a vivid metaphor, and made more striking because both singers are so buff.” [NYT]
“As Renee Fleming was looking over a list of potential franchise businesses she could open, she noticed that Little Caesars — one of her favorites — offered incentives to entrepreneurs who had served in the military.” [Denver Business Journal]
The ArtHaus Musik DVD of the Deutsches Nationaltheater/Staatskapelle Weimar production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, stage directed by Michael Shulz, begins with a long still shot: That’s right, this interpretation of Wagner’s epic 19-hour cycle kicks off with a long static shot of… some dirty red boots. It’s gonna be a long Gesamtkunstwerk.
parterre fave Peter Konwitschny has returned to his métier, directing a new production of Salome — with a happy ending! Following the jump are excerpts from an interview with the director in Volksrant, translated by Our Own Freniac.
What? Springtime? Adam Lambert? An Ungaro Spring frock (pictured)? Or that old standby, “gayer than eight guys fucking nine guys?” (Not pictured, alas) Yes, all those things are gay, and some are even gay gay gay gay gay. But nothing is or ever was as gay as this:
Doubling down on its artistic mission, New York City Opera begins a tenuous season with a turgid Bible drama.
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