Star, crossed
The key to enjoying Bellini’s I Capuleti e Montechi is to do a hard factory reset and reformat your brain to forget all other works based on Romeo and Juliet.
Calixto Bieito
38 pieces since 2007 — at 11 companies, most often at San Francisco Opera.
38
pieces
11
companies
20
years
A tsar is torn
In Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, all the Russian people starve and suffer, but none has suffering like the mental agonies of Tsar Boris.
Le droit du canard
Oh, we’ve a veritable stew of canards to feast upon this week, cher public, courtesy of our old friend Rupert Christiansen.
No one who speaks German could be an evil man
If Frank Castorf‘s work on Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth accomplishes nothing else, it should serve as a sort of loud disorganized reminder of the dangers of indulging in the intentional fallacy.
Ring? What ring?
All right, I admit it; I finally broke down and read the program notes for the Ring in the Bayreuth program book.
The Piotr principle
A Dutch-speaking parterrian has graciously translated the interview with Piotr Beczala that’s been causing such a foofaraw lately.
The Beczala contradiction
So, Piotr Beczala (left) has gone and blabbed to Luister, which is some sort of Dutch glossy classical music magazine…
The world is your balloon
If it wasn’t anything special as art or even entertainment, Lyric Opera of Chicago’s recent production of Rinaldo (March 24) does offer an excellent peg on which to hang an argument about the future of opera in America.
All hell baroque loose
Many American opera-lovers take the “Grand Tour”—a pilgrimage to Europe to attend opera at its great houses—Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera in London or Otello at La Scala in Milan, or perhaps for the more well-heeled a visit to the summer festivals of Glyndebourne, Salzburg or Aix-en-Provence.
Future imperfect
The world has come to an end and we are at the end of the world, the collapsed ruins of a bridge that can no longer be crossed. There is no greenery; the few trees that are left are dead and being chopped down for fuel. Shell-shocked survivors wander through this hellscape, fighting over the […]
Mozart at the peepshow
First night in Berlin, since the feared jet lag did not, in fact, do your doyenne in, was spent at the Komische Oper seeing Die Entführung aus dem Serail in the “notorious” Calixto Bieito production. La Cieca’s opinion?
Skating on the Nile?
“Aida am Rhein,” an outdoor on-location live presentation of Verdi’s opera, with the cast of the current Calixto Bieito production in Basel. (So far as I can tell, Bieito didn’t direct the film or the outdoor spectacle, but presumably some of the dramatic ideas of his production were carried over into this performance.)
Of dodos and dildos
After seeing a video excerpt from the Met’s Patrice Chéreau production of From the House of the Dead, I was struck by the cleanness of it all, the sets, the costumes, the tastefully muted colors, and the direction. No doubt it is moving, in its way, but is it relevant? It looks like generic suffering […]
Sky scheduled to fall in 2009
It’s still two years before the dreaded Mortier monster is due to descend upon the city, but right-wing thinktankstress and Giuliani enabler Heather Mac Donaldisn’t wasting any time getting the hyperbole rolling. From The City Journal (“the best magazine in America” — Peggy Noonan), a sample of Mac Donald’s heady prose: While Belgian-born Mortier’s fellow […]
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).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
