La Cieca’s cher public — and music lovers around the world — won’t have Bernard Holland to kick around any more. The veteran classical music reviewer is leaving the New York TImes after 27 years, though to us who read him regularly it has easily seemed twice that. Holland is one of about 85 NYT newsroom […]
[This article originally appeared in the print zine precursor to this site, one of a series of surveys of live recordings by critic Leila de Lakmé.] Leyla Gencer. The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas, […]
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).
Another “Name that Regie” quiz for you, cher public. Remember, if you have seen this production (or know the photos), don’t blurt out the answer — let others deduce it!
“La Diva Turca” died this morning in Milan. In tribute to the art of Leyla Gencer, here is the soprano in the final scenes of Bellini’s Norma at La Scala on January 13, 1965. She is joined in this performance by Bruno Prevedi (Pollione) and Nicola Zaccaria (Oroveso); Gianandrea Gavazzeni is the conductor. UPDATE: The […]
Thanks to High C’s for this excellent topic suggestion.
La Cieca thanks cher Charles for sending this “funniest, most withering description of singers ever written” from James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce.
La Cieca offers her own personal salute to a very special holiday with an edition of Unnatural Acts of Opera featuring Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia. In this legendary April 20, 1965 performance, the eponymous antiheroine is Montserrat Caballé. Lucrezia Borgia (Prologue)
“Houston Grand Opera has appointed Laura Canning to run its young-artist training program, Houston Grand Opera Studio, effective Aug. 1. She follows General Director and CEO Anthony Freud from the Welsh National Opera, where she has been artistic administrator for the last ten years.” [via musicalamerica.com]Â
A very young Anna Moffo sings La sonnambula. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://youtube.com/v/XuC25v_tzOA” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
First the bad news, or anyway the bad news for us New Yorkers. Why the hell should Seattle Opera get Mariusz Kwiecien in Puritani, whereas we get — whatever his name was? Now the good news, though Seattle may think otherwise: Nick Scholl is moving to New York! (The photo’s a detail of an image […]
Conductor Franz Welser-Moest (not pictured) has backed out of two performances of Die Fledermaus at the Zurich Opera, complaining that he was “unhappy” with the staging by Michael Sturminger. One innovation in this production is the inclusion of several vampires among Orlovsky’s retinue, which of course means that good old Frosch has lots of funny […]
The Royal Opera House (you know, that place with the naked buskecutioner) is looking for “budding” filmmakers to produce a 40 second long version of Romeo and Juliet. The company asks for the finished featurettes to be uploaded to the Royal Opera’s YouTube site, which is just so Web 2.0 La Cieca can hardly stand […]
Obviously the snippet of Birgit Nilsson‘s singing in the Curse Quiz does not represent the great dramatic soprano at her considerable best, since it’s taken from a post-retirement gala performance. Here’s Nilsson’s Isolde at her peak in one of La Cieca’s very favorite YouTube clips, from a 1967 telecast. (It’s been posted here before, but […]
La Cieca presents, in traditional YouTube format, the shocking solution to the Mystery of Isolde’s Curse. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://youtube.com/v/3StsbgcqbUE” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Congratulations to Christian Ocier who recognized all 14 voices almost immediately and so is the winner of the amazon.com gift card. And thanks to all of you, cher public, for playing!
No fooling the cher public this time around: most of you guessed easily that the depicted production was Die Zauberflöte, as staged in the Bundestag subway station in Berlin. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://youtube.com/v/Lf2RNksObiw” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
I thought that it would be fun to tell you about a little concert last Sunday here in Montréal, with Renée Fleming, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato and Matthew Polenzani. It was actually the first time that I have heard any of them in the flesh, so I was most curious to see if the voices […]
The American Opera Theater makes its New York debut this weekend at BAM with Charpentier’s remarkable 1688 opera David et Jonathas, featuring the Ignoti Dei period orchestra conducted by Timothy Nelson and joined by the Chamber Singers of Virginia Tech. Per the America Opera Theater’s press release, “David et Jonathas explores the relationship between three […]
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Has it really been nearly two months since our last “serious” vocal identification quiz? (By “serious,” La Cieca means of course not only for glory but for the coveted amazon.com gift card!) So, while we still have our most recent podcast of Tristan und Isolde on the brain, you clever public can try your skill […]
Cher public, you are simply getting too clever for this poor old simple-minded doyenne. With only two photos to guide you, so many of you deduced that the opera was Wagner’s Siegfried, in the new production by Sven-Eric Bechtolf for Vienna. And so, our next quiz will be limited to only one photo. Should you […]
After Natalie Dessay‘s second act aria in La Fille du Régiment, the Metropolitan Opera audience just didn’t want to stop applauding — that’s how much fun they were having. Finally the soprano had to shush them so this new production of the Donizetti comic opera (heard April 21) could rollick to its triumphant conclusion. Our […]
The Bonynge and Sutherland of YouTube, Wenarto and Izzy Anderson, return with a more elaborately produced version of what is rapidly becoming Izzy’s signature tune, “Nessun dorma!”
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