Unconscious coupling
Pelléas and Mélisande are not transparent to themselves. Which means: they each have an unconscious.
Jonathan Miller
24 pieces since 2006 — at 2 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
24
pieces
2
companies
21
years
By company
“So much for traditional sweetness and charm”
On this day in 1998 the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production of Le nozze di Figaro featuring Cecilia Bartoli as Susanna.
French kiss
To celebrate Valerie Masterson‘s turning 85 tomorrow, Trove Thursday offers a second annual birthday salute to the English soprano.
Varying the song
The opera The Rake’s Progress, as many people know already, was inspired by a series of engravings and paintings of the same name by William Hogarth, showing the decline of a young man into depravity and insanity.
‘Così,’ cheap ‘n cheerful
In 2022, making Così fan tutte intimate is not a radical act. Making it enjoyable, however, is.
Work on ‘Progress’
Young voices ringing out Stravinsky’s witty melodies at close quarters gives great pleasure if you are fond of this witty score and its many parodies of early operatic cliché.
I have a song to sing, O!
The lovely English soprano Valerie Masterson turns 84 today, prompting Trove Thursday to present her in a pair of her specialties.
Eye of a storm
Two of the leading postwar Czech sopranos appear together in Janacek’s Kát’a Kabanová when Trove Thursday presents Gabriela Benacková‘s gleaming heroine in her US debut relentlessly persecuted by Nadjezhda Kniplová’s implacable mother-in-law.
The Stuff and Nonsense Dreams Are Made On
The New York Gilbert And Sullivan Players is giving its umpteenth production of The Mikado through next Sunday at the Kaye Playhouse, and the show remains frisky and first rate.
House of the setting sun
When a work is named for its lovers one might legitimately expect that pair to dominate its performance but in my experience that is never the case with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes
A wonderfully committed Ailyn Pérez and Gerald Finley at Saturday afternoon’s revival abetted by Emmanuel Villaume’s passionate conducting converted me to a Thaïs believer.
At sunset
Sunday afternoon’s all-Richard Strauss concert served as a de facto commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the debut of Renée Fleming, long one of the house’s biggest stars.
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.
Black, box
Passion propels more operas than almost any other human emotion; however, many musical dramas have a very different sort of passion—the final days of Jesus—as their subject.
Ten thousand bedrooms
The Metropolitan Opera desperately needed a new production of Le nozze di Figaro.
Ulysses in Midtown
In the program for Opera Omnia’s production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse, Crystal Manich, the company’s stage director, speaks of producing “baroque works in non-traditional ways.”
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.
Deeds of kindness to review
For decades thousands and thousands have attended Handel’s Messiah (usually around Christmas or more appropriately near Easter) making it easily one of the most widely known works of classical music.
Can this “Marriage” be saved?
The performance at the Metropolitan Opera last night proved that yes, it is possible to kill this opera. I don’t know how they managed it, but they did.
Buyer’s market
La Cieca was cced the following letter sent by a “long-time patron of NYCO” in response to “the recently received Subscription Renewal Brochure.” She has withheld the patron’s name by request.
The sea was angry that day, my friends
It’s a sad story, really. Debussy and Maeterlinck had what the kids would call Major Drama over who was to sing Melisande (Mary Garden vs. the person you’ve never heard of) and so Maeterlinck didn’t see Pelleas until years after Debussy had died, so he never got to be like “word!” or, I suppose, “mot!”
Three quarters of a crazy day
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.
Oh, the pain, the pain!
It looks like La Cieca spoke too soon. Dr. Jonathan Miller‘s 2004 announcement of his farewell to opera direction has turned out to be, like so much the good doctor says, a load of bullshit. “England is obsessed with the cutting edge, the new thing, and if you’re as old as I am, you’re assumed […]
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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).
