Reunited and it feels so good
When Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano first sang Lucia together as students at AVA few would have predicted that they would go on to sing Turandot 16 years later.
Franco Zeffirelli
133 pieces since 2005 — at 5 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
133
pieces
5
companies
22
years
23 pieces as Metropolitan Opera — stats above show all coverage for Franco Zeffirelli.
View all
Tree and tree again
While everyone tries to figure out what on earth Strauss and Hofmannsthal are up to in Die Frau ohne Schatten, now playing at the Met, Chris’s Cache offers a later, simpler, shorter Strauss with three live broadcasts of his “bucolic tragedy” Daphne.
Distinctly human
In the five short years that I’ve been in New York, I have seen that crusty old Franco Zeffirelli production of La bohème more times than I can count on one hand. And there are certainly times when that peeling mise-en-scène really shows its age.
Master of monumentality
On this day in 1987 the Met raised the curtain on Franco Zeffirelli‘s production of Turandot.
The first time I saw Paris
On this day in 1981 “the Zeffirelli Bohème” opened at the Metropolitan Opera.
Thrust into the political spotlight
The Met’s revival of Turandot on Saturday night was surprisingly contentious.
Suspended in time
You know in some of those old Jeanette MacDonald movies where she plays a prima donna and receives applause in a public setting? That’s just what happened when the three of us walked into that restaurant, one patron calling out “Brava!”
Not really about ‘La bohème’
What is there to say about the Franco Zeffirelli Bohème? What is left to say?
Quicksilver princess
Trove Thursday remembers Edita Gruberová with live recordings of two of the three operas I heard her perform at the Met: a 1985 Munich La Traviata with Neil Shicoff and Wolfgang Brendel conducted by Carlos Kleiber and an I Puritani from Vienna 1994 featuring two other artists who recently left us too soon: Marcello Giordani and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
Turandot doesn’t exist
It’s back to business as usual at the Met, for better and for worse.
Queen of the New Year
Although the gold glitter cannons detonated at the end of the act were an ostentatious reminder that this was a celebration of the new year, it seemed that the only words on anyone’s lips as the audience filed out of the theater were “Viva Netrebko!”
Orientation
There were plenty of Turan-do’s and only a few Turandon’ts at the Met’s Turandot Sunday afternoon.
Man of the camellias
Tuesday the Met unveils its sixth new production of La Traviata since moving to Lincoln Center.
Debuts and farewells
Arabella with Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting a prime-time 1980s Munich cast.
You give me fever
Mortality is ugly—it smells, it makes uncomfortable noises, it takes its time; and then there is the overwhelming sense of dread and helplessness.
There arose such a clatter
With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
Let me like a soldier fall
Between them, Maria Guleghina, Marcello Giordani, James Morris and John Del Carlo have nearly 150 combined years of service on stage.
Trick or trill
With help from the Met’s invaluable performance archive, here is a look back at just some of what you could have seen, and perhaps did see, on October 31st through the years at the Met.
The unanswered question
Would exciting American dramatic soprano Christine Goerke be the next great ice-princess we have been waiting for?
Spring will be a little late this year
La bohème is such a popular romantic opera that hardly anyone ever notices that Mimì and Rodolfo undergo what in modern terms would be called speed dating.
Lazy afternoon
Neither Maria Guleghina nor Marcello Giordani was in best form for the Met’s HD telecast of Turandot — and, truth be told, the lavish Franco Zeffirelli production is beginning to show its age.
“Live” at last!
La Cieca is delighted to note that two of the best-remembered and most-coveted “Live from the Met” telecasts have at last been made available on DVD. Otello (25 September 1978) and Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci (5 April 1978) are now available at the Met Opera Shop and online at www.metoperashop.org, “as well as through other outlets.” La […]
requiem and rehearsal
La Cieca’s spy reports on the Met’s pre-season:Â
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!
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).
