“It’s always a treat to start the season with a pleasant surprise, and an exciting new dramatic soprano is one of the nicest discoveries of all—particularly when she heads up one of the strongest ensemble casts the Metropolitan Opera has fielded in years.” That’s our editor James beginning his 2005-06 season as a reviewer in […]
Ever feel a pang of nostalgia for the good old days when people dressed for the opera? For a quick cure, here’s a link you should keep bookmarked. It’s the “Look Book” section of New York magazine, featuring photos of some of the attendees of the opening night at the Met. By the looks of […]
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).
Beginning tonight on “Unnatural Acts of Opera,” La Cieca presents a potpourri of operatic scenes and arias sung by latter-day stimmdiva Aprile Millo, including selections by Rossini, Verdi, Beethoven , Dvorak and Cilea.
Cher public, those of you who have written to La Cieca wondering at the frequency Anthony Tommasini uses the word “strapping” to describe opera singers of the male persuasion — well, wonder no more. According to the New York Times archives, Tony has flogged his favorite modifer no fewer than 44 times in the past […]
A few of La Cieca’s cher public wrote in to complain that last week’s podcast, the Beverly Sills farewell gala, offered lots of gala but not much Sills. So we’re remedying that this week on “Unnatural Acts of Opera,” with an all-Sills program featuring music by Handel, Mozart and R. Strauss.
After what an insider described as a “messy” dress rehearsal that included several cracked high notes (due to allergies? or nerves?), Olga Borodina may or may not be singing the prima of Cenerentola at the Met tomorrow night. On dit that Joyce di Donato has been rushed through the staging in preparation for a last-minute […]
….Last scene of allThat ends this strange eventful historyIs second childishness and mere oblivionSans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste…But those eyebrows aren’t going anywhere!
Have the years flown that fast? Well, you tell La Cieca. She just this past weekend realized that it’s been 25 years since Beverly Sills retired from singing. To put that in persepctive, the duration of her retirement (1980 – 2005) is now exactly equal to the duration of her New York City Opera career […]
La Cieca sat through Terrence McNally‘s latest effort, Dedication, Sunday afternoon, and the best thing she can think to say about it is that this play makes a whole lot of opera librettos look like masterpieces of literature. There’s this husband and wife children’s theater team who are trying to convince a dying grande dame […]
The recently-premiered opera The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is webcast by the BBC this afternoon at 2:25 New York time, a broadcast from the English National Opera. The Beeb’s website describes the work so: “Gerald Barry‘s new opera, based on the play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, translated by Denis Calandra, exploring the tortured […]
You know, it’s one thing to flounce around dusting the floor of a church with your silken train, the meantime flaunting your bosom to the Blessed Virgin, but it’s another thing altogether to take a heartfelt hymn like “Amazing Grace” and transform it into cheap soundtrack music. Can’t someone stop this woman?
Comments, requests, complaints… or other reactions to the Tristan podcasts? And for those of you listening “at home” (as opposed to on the Ipod), here’s a wonderful resource: a complete libretto of the opera with hypertext leading to an English translation and illustrations of the Leitmotiven.
First he lost his Grand Tier, then his Floral Hall, and now, it appears, beleaguered benefactor Alberto W. “Albert” Vilar is about to lose his UN Plaza duplex. The newly-listed apartment boasts 20 rooms, including 6 bedrooms, 10 full bathrooms, 3 powder rooms, a sun-drenched eat-in kitchen, and sweeping views of the East River, the […]
“As I have never in life felt the real bliss of love, I must erect a monument to the most beautiful of all my dreams, in which, from beginning to end, that love shall thoroughly satiated. I have in my head ‘Tristan and Isolde,’ the simplest, but most full-blooded musical conception. With the black flag […]
Rodgers and Hammerstein is as far as Aprile Millo is willing to cross over at Carnegie Hall, and that’s what led to the rift between her and promoter Ron Delsener — and to the cancellation of the October 14 event. La Millo tells her side of the story: NYT.
Sister Sieglinde summarizes the roiling controversy so far in her Diary, and the most recent whisper La Cieca has heard is, “if that rock promoter wanted Avril Lavigne, he should have hired Avril Lavigne; Aprile is an opera singer.” Among the rumors La Cieca doesn’t believe: Millo is afraid to sing high notes. [Duh, she […]
La Cieca just heard this on opera-l just now, and checked the Ron Delsener Presents web site, which states, yes, “this show has been canceled.” No idea why, but La Cieca will ask around. Update: a source close to the Delsener organization has told La Cieca that the promoter and the artist had “artistic differences,” […]
Starting tonight on “Unnatural Acts of Opera,” something of a departure, in more ways that one. To begin with, it’s La Cieca’s first snippet show, featuring individual scenes and arias instead of the more familiar whole acts. The other strange part about this show is that it features the type of singer La Cieca doesn’t […]
“Tell me, Roberto, does this costume make my manly butt look big?” Speaking of which, has Anthony Tommasini started writing under an assumed name?
A close reading of Paul Kellogg‘s announcement of his resignation from the NYCO suggests to La Cieca that there’s some kind of major bad news that’s being kept secret here. I’m thinking that maybe it’s yet another setback in building that new opera house. To be perfectly frank, La Cieca has come to the conclusion […]
Which mega-manager went on a quest to fleece other agents of the most glittering stars on their rosters, but managed to sign only one medium-major name — a soprano whose star vehicle at a swanky summer festival was almost immediately scuttled in favor of a Gilbert and Sullivan revival? (A pity this soprano’s repertoire doesn’t […]
Maria Guleghina‘s first Vespri Elena. Hurricane Katrina. You write your own joke. From Playbillarts.
It certainly is not news that lesbians are pretty handy around the opera house, whether it’s singing Octavian or running the light board. But the English National Opera is hoping that the promise of hot girl-on-girl action will give their box office a woody. The company is advertising their production of a new work called […]
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