24 pieces since 2005 — in 19 roles, at 7 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
It took the Metropolitan Opera decades to catch up with the rest of the world and finally stage La Cenerentola. Gioachino Rossini’s opera buffa, one of his most beloved and accomplished works, received its belated Met debut in 1997, amidst legitimate suspicions that the new production was less a genuine desire to add a belcanto […]
Our Own Little Stevie reflects on the Met’s new Macbeth. I’d like to admit a guilty pleasure of mine: I’ve secretly been waiting with a lot of anticipation for Maria Guleghina to sing in Macbeth and Norma this year. I have not told this to many people because it seems that the common expectation has […]
What we have here is the grandest opera never heard.
It’s nasty world, Shostakovich seems to say, where life alternates between boring and terrifying.
“[W]omen are interesting and important in real life. They are not an afterthought of nature, they are not secondary players in human destiny, and every society has always known that.” — Margaret Atwood, February 2017
When LA Opera finally decided to put a toe in the water and mount its first production since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was Igor Stravinsky‘s opera/oratorio Oedipus Rex.
What to do with all those glorious short operas: play them alone or find companion pieces?
Our JJ‘s review of the Met’s revival of Le nozze di Figaro didn’t make it into today’s New York Post for reasons that you should be able to figure out once you’ve read the piece. At the suggestion of his editor, La Cieca is publishing it here.
The revival of Don Carlo(s) which opened on November 3 restored the translated Italian text and the cut 1882 four-act revision not seen at the Met since Rudolf Bing’s last season in 1972.
When was the last time the Metropolitan Opera mounted a new production that was musically outstanding yet the direction and/or design mostly sucked?
It was Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto, with its disorientingly deconstructive approach to its source text, that gave Brett Dean’s Hamlet its identity.
Having heard a bit of the opening night broadcast and read some decidedly mixed reviews, I was totally unprepared for the remarkable performance of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena that I attended on December 15 at Chicago Lyric Opera.
Thoughtless direction stifled the epic drama.
Cher public, who else but La Cieca brings you such in-depth arts coverage that you get not one but two reports from spies at the dress rehearsal of the Met’s new La Damnation de Faust ? After the jump, eyewitness accounts of the Lepagerie from Our Own Gualtier Maldè and Sanford.Â
Revivals of Falstaff in Milan and Don Carlo in Naples have Larry Wolff thinking across the six decades of Verdi‘s career
The main reason to see this revival is Benjamin Bernheim’s Duca.
Anna Pirozzi makes a welcome return to the Metropolitan Opera, but Turandot remains as thorny as ever.
The winter 2014 final run of the Met’s first/only Rusalka production (a new one is scheduled in a few seasons) seemed both a nod to the theater’s past and a hint of its future.
The legend of the mermaid is ancient, and recently scientists have theorized that these legends might have arisen when humans encountered marine mammals such as whales, seals, or sea lions.
Today’s Rusalka video overview covers filmed performances of Dvorák’s opera since 2010.
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