Questions and antlers
Verdi’s only successful comic opera, Falstaff, is notably hard to produce.
Barbara Frittoli
23 pieces since 2006 — in 8 roles, at 5 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
23
pieces
8
roles
5
companies
21
years
Role Alice Ford
Role Donna Elvira
After dark
The Canadian Robert Carsen would appear to love the theater to the point of fixation.
Behind the red curtain
It was indeed a curious sensation making a late morning trek to East 59th Street, a block devoted to showro0ms for bizarre upscale furniture and lighting fixtures, and then to enter a boutique cinema specializing in Hindi films (the big coming attraction right now is Desi Boyz) — and all this before sitting down in […]
Role Maria Stuarda
Queens Power Struggle — Update
La Cieca rushes back into blackout-torn Queens, New York to podcast Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, starring Barbara Frittoli and Anna Caterina Antonacci. Unnatural Acts of Opera.
Role Micaëla
Pastia shrugged
The interpretation of Carmen by Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca has been much debated, many finding her cold and remote, others admiring her subtly smoldering quality. A new Deutsche Grammophon DVD documenting the Met’s January 16, 2010 performances offers us an opportunity to examine the gypsy in close-up. This is certainly not the lusty, passionate, mercurial Carmen […]
Role Mimi
Embroidered silk
Maria Agresta‘s delicately-acted, sumptuously-sung seamstress transformed what might have been just an average Wednesday night revival into something finer.
Pazzo son, guardate!
Manon Lescaut was Giacomo Puccini’s first big international success. His publisher, Giulio Ricordi, tried to put him off the project by citing Jules Massenet’s very successful adaptation just nine years previously. Puccini was intent on making the story his own, insisting, “A woman like Manon can have more than one lover… I shall feel it […]
Kokusai himitsu keisatsu
You perhaps will not be completely flabbergasted that La Cieca has a spy following the Met’s Japan tour (pictured). The reports thus far (I mean, once the ragtag band of misfits finally landed in the Land of the Rising Sun) are not particularly scandalous, but, please give our operative time!
Role Nedda
For the birds
A “lone voice in the wilderness” booed Barbara Frittoli’s calamitous Nedda.
Role Sifare
Mithridates is dead
Trove Thursday marks Mozart’s 264th birthday on Sunday with the 14-year-old’s remarkable opera seria Mitridate, Re di Ponto .
Role Vitellia
The quality of mercy
“Trove Thursday” offers Mozart’s late opera seria in a Paris “pirate” featuring the high-voltage diva-duo of Anna Caterina Antonacci and Elina Garanca.