Ne plus ultra
When LaCieca asked me to choose my favorite live recording, I had to think… and think.
Karl Böhm
63 pieces since 2007 — at 8 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
63
pieces
8
companies
20
years
Fairy tale
“Conduct Salome and Elektra as if they were by Mendelssohn: Fairy music.” Seriously, how often has that happened?
Two ladies in the shade…
The simple fable at the heart of Die Frau ohne Schatten shouldn’t be difficult to parse, but Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto juggles its vaguely Jungian, vaguely Arabian Nights symbolitry as if with intent to mystify and bewilder.
The music lovers
The curious things about accepted wisdom is that sometimes it’s correct.
Opening knight
The 1965 season was a time of big changes at the Vienna State Opera.
By Adriel
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Female on the beach
Christian Thielemann has proved himself to be the preeminent Strauss interpreter of the current generation of conductors and he’s in striking form here.
Pyramid scheme
Giulio Cesare at the Met proved an evening that added up to much more than the sum of its uneven parts.
One thousand four
My mother asked me once, whilst staring aghast at my CD collection, why I needed so many copies of Don Giovanni.
Shadow, no doubt
Richard Strauss’s “last romantic opera,” as he called Die Frau Ohne Schatten, is and has always been a problem child.
A Rita bird talk
When sending out CDs to for me to review, our doyenne could not know that I have a fetish for 1950s vintage import LP jackets. I remember combing through the LP bins gazing admiringly at the import disks of a generation of middle-European singers who I was too young to have heard in person, who […]
Unchained melody
When a new production of Fidelio premiered at the Met in 1960, the opera had been absent from the repertoire since 1951, the post-war return of Kirsten Flagstad as a still effective Leonore and led by Bruno Walter. In the period between the two productions a new generation of singers had begun to make their […]
strum und drang
Undaunted by Hurricane Hannah, La Cieca continues her presentation of Lohengrin at Unnatural Acts of Opera. Lohengrin: Jess Thomas Elsa: Claire Watson Telramund: Walter Berry Ortrud: Christa Ludwig Koenig Heinrich: Martti Talvela Heerrufer: Eberhard Waechter Vienna State Opera, Karl Boehm, 1965. Lohengrin Act 2
a knight to remember
In honor of the 158th anniversary of the premiere of Lohengrin, Unnatural Acts of Opera presents a performance of the Wagnerian work from Vienna in 1965 under the baton of Dr. Karl Böhm. Lohengrin, Act 1
Hereinspaziert!
Was seht ihr in den Lust- und Trauerspielen?!Haustiere, die so wohlgesittet fühlen,An blasser Pflanzenkost ihr Mütchen kühlenUnd schwelgen in behaglichem Geplärr,Wie jene andern – unten im Parterre… La Cieca salutes the successful launch of Alex Ross‘s The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century with a podcast of one of her very favorite operas […]
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).
