Strange music
Just over a month ago the great Catalan soprano Montserrat Caballé died at age 85.
Renée Fleming
171 pieces since 2005 — in 36 roles, at 19 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
171
pieces
36
roles
19
companies
22
years
By role
Marschallin 5
Rodelinda 4
Violetta 4
Armida 3
Countess 3
Thaïs 3
Daphne 3
Lucrezia Borgia 3
Ariadne 2
Blanche DuBois 2
Clarissa Vaughan 2
Arabella 2
Margaret Johnson 2
Manon 2
Rusalka 2
Pat Nixon 2
Nettie 1
Tatyana 1
Rosina 1
Sandrina 1
Susannah 1
Louise 1
unknown 1
Virginia Woolf 1
Marguerite 1
Alaide 1
La Folie 1
intermission commentatress 1
Hanna Glawari 1
Georgia O'Keeffe 1
Gabriel/Eva 1
Ellen 1
Countess; Thäis 1
Countess Rosina 1
Countess Madeleine 1
Anna 1
By company
Metropolitan Opera 31
Lyric Opera of Chicago 2
Boston Symphony Orchestra 2
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra 1
Wolf Trap 1
Washington National Opera 1
San Francisco Opera 1
Royal Opera House 1
Richard Tucker Gala 1
Orchestre de Paris 1
Opera Orchestra of New York 1
Opéra de Paris 1
National Symphony Orchestra 1
Los Angeles Opera 1
LA Opera 1
Imperial Theater 1
Houston Grand Opera 1
Festspielhaus Baden-Baden 1
Carnegie Hall 1
Role Alaide
Role Anna
Ghost of honor
The elusive La dame blanche returned for one evening to New York City on May 28 thanks to the New Amsterdam Opera led by maestro Keith Chambers.
Role Arabella
Someday she’ll come along, the girl I love
In Richard Strauss’s Arabella, the heroine is consumed with finding the right man—der Richtige—but who is the right Arabella?
Coming out
Christian Thielemann’s spirited, precise conducting and the superb, sumptuous playing of the Staatskapelle Dresden are the finest features of this strongly cast performance of Strauss’s Arabella.
Role Ariadne
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.
She wants to be a primadonna
On Saturday I attended the premiere performance of a new production of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Germany. It was Renée Fleming’s debut in the title role…
Role Armida
The Bland Witch Project
The premiere of Mary Zimmerman’s production of Giacomo Gioachino Rossini’s Armida was arguably the most controversial event of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2009-2010 season. The performances represented Armida’s first run at the Metropolitan Opera and had been commissioned at the behest of mega-diva Renée Fleming. The soprano had scored a triumph in concert presentations of the […]
German, te togli al campy…
1817 was a fertile and diverse time for 26 year old Gioachino Rossini. It opened with his last true opera buffa, La Cenerentola, continued with his most important semiseria, La gazza ladra, and ended with two operas, which, although both nominally belonging to the seria genre, could not be more different from each other.
Once on that island
Our Own Gualtier Maldè (right) escaped today’s Armida dress rehearsal at the Met with his wits intact. He reports:
Role Blanche DuBois
The kindness of Previn
Renée Fleming is one of the most polarizing figures to be discussed here on an ongoing basis.
Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable
André Previn‘s A Streetcar Named Desire, with the “People’s Diva” herself in the iconic role of the unstable Blanche DuBois.
Role Clarissa Vaughan
Unhappy ‘Hours’
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
Shining ‘Hours’
Dramaturgically, The Hours is a mixed bag: I wouldn’t discard it, but I would want to fix it. But simply as an evening of gorgeous music and singing, it’s cordon bleu.
Role Countess
Don’t count out the Countess
In concert with Renée Fleming’s quietly authoritative stage presence, the performance offered frequent reminders of the special affinity between this singer and Strauss’s aristocratic women.
“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.
When I have sung my songs
Soprano Renée Fleming is certainly making the role of the Countess in Richard Strauss’s final opera Capriccio the focus of her late-career years.
Role Countess Madeleine
If I only had a harp
Capriccio skates along on a fine line between a fascinating idea-driven debate about the purpose of art in the wider world and a rather fussy narrow debate about text and music interesting only to those interested in opera as theatre.
Role Countess Rosina
“Ghosts” of honor
John Corigliano‘s first and second symphonies won the Grawemeyer and the Pulitzer, respectively; the premiere of his Third Symphony wasn’t even reviewed by the Times. His score for The Red Violin won an Oscar™; his score for Edge of Darkness ended up on the cutting room floor. Is there an American composer at once more […]
Role Countess; Thäis
Fifty shades of gold
Anticipation of events like the Metropolitan Opera’s 50th Anniversary bash turns me back into the newly opera-soused kid who begged his parents to let him watch the highlights of the Bing Gala on the family color television.
Role Daphne
I’ll plant my own tree
Richard Strauss’ “Bucolic Tragedy in One Act” Daphne is one of his most beautiful and most frustrating works.
The constant nymph
The old adage “the third time’s the charm” proved to be the case with me and Daphne, Richard Strauss’s ravishing bukolische Tragödie, when I recently heard it performed by Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra.
Blow a kiss, take a bough
Richard Strauss’s many one-act operas make excellent concert programs, both for their length (usually under two hours) and the primary place each gives the orchestration, a specialty where Strauss’s brilliance seldom deserted him.
Role Ellen
Drunk in both head and heart
This week’s “Trove Thursday” offers Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice featuring Anthony Rolfe Johnson.
Role Gabriel/Eva
Behold the happy pair
Beverly Sills and Renée Fleming perform 30 years apart the same work with the same orchestra in the same venue!
Role Georgia O'Keeffe
All the light we cannot hear
The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s program of works by Mozart and Kevin Puts, a composer championed by star Renée Fleming, was one of musical and artistic contrasts.
Role Hanna Glawari
Where have all the bubbles gone?
As a whole, the evening seemed forced and a bit dispiriting.
Role intermission commentatress
The Inner Voice of Reason
You may well be surprised to hear La Cieca say this, cher public, but she’s bellowing a lusty “brava” to none other than Renee Fleming. On yesterday’s matinee Met broadcast of Rigoletto, Fleming took on a role associated with Geraldine Farrar, that of intermission commentatress. One of the first questions she lobbed at Joseph Calleja […]
Role La Folie
The man who would be nymph
Sometimes the fates conspire, preventing an artist from recording the role for which he is his generation’s touchstone.
Role Louise
The last time I saw Paris
Trove Thursday goes mini-epic with Gustave Charpentier’s naturalistic slice-of-life of fin-de-siêcle Paris in a rare 1999 Renée Fleming performance of Louise co-starring Jerry Hadley, Samuel Ramey and Felicity Palmer.
Role Lucrezia Borgia
Pretty poison
The wicked poisoner showed herself in fine form, full of purple passion and lusty music-making that would gladden the heart of any bel canto enthusiast or opera lover in general.
Pick your poison
I think we’re all aware by now of the wicked libel that the French dramatist Victor Hugo concocted about the fair Lucrezia Borgia with his depiction of her as a murderous virago.
lucrezia, gorgeous
A new spy debuts in La Cieca’s service, reporting from the first night of WNO’s Lucrezia Borgia: Overall, I thought the opera was worth the price of attendance. The costumes of the main characters looked like something from Star Trek. Renée Fleming‘s hair looked like Tina Turner circa 1984. Fleming was impressive, especially in many […]
Role Manon
Et voila l’histoire
To mark Beverly Sills’s 90th birthday (May 25, 1929) “Trove Thursday” offers the late diva’s acclaimed Massenet heroine opposite her ideal Des Grieux, Alain Vanzo.
i want to liveblog!
Tuesday morning: A further report from Lindoro Almaviva: Over all the night was a success d’estime. It was a Renee worship night and we got just that. I am sure you will be able to talk in better terms about the singing or lack thereof. My impression is that Renee had an “acting” night, as […]
Role Margaret Johnson
Distant ‘Light’
Whether Lyric Opera of Chicago is an appropriate venue for such an intimate, gentle show as The Light in the Piazza is a subject of much critical debate.
Ray of ‘Light’
An opera company presenting a Broadway musical that centers around a woman of a certain age travelling to Italy with her young daughter might seem more a vehicle for a great diva of a certain age.
Role Marguerite
Kaleidoscopic maestro
Saturday marks the centenary of Julius Rudel’s birth which Trove Thursday celebrates with Le Coq d’or, Faust and Ariodante, a triple-bill showcasing his impressive versatility, featuring Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle, two of the most important artists he nurtured during his leadership of the New York City Opera.
Role Marschallin
Mit leichtem Herz und leichten Händen
Der Rosenkavalier (on Blu-ray and DVD) is from the Met HD broadcast which also happened to be the final performance of the run, becoming a true souvenir of the farewells of its two leading ladies.
The frailty of everything earthly
If everything you see is great, you are either new to opera or chronically easy to please.
Through a glass vaguely
Any production of Der Rosenkavalier that can transform the usually excruciating first half of the third act into a hilarious romp already has my vote.
‘Ja, ja’ land
We leave behind the Vienna of the 1740s, the time of breeches, fans and white wigs.
American Beauty Rosenkavalier
[La Cieca is delighted to introduce a new reviewer, @scazzasofija.] I found Rosenkavalier (Met, Oct. 13) to be mostly sublime. My quibbles come from a preference for Kleiber’s tempos. I found that de Waart was waving his arms as fast as he could for the beginning, but I think the prelude and up until the […]
Role Nettie
The perfect use of an imperfect medium
Carousel is receiving a Broadway revival in a simple, cautious production that still manages to pack an emotional wallop.
Role Pat Nixon
Rose to the occasion
The embattled Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bring Adams and Dvorák to Carnegie Hall.
By the (little red) book
Kent Nagano gives a boost to the Opéra national de Paris‘s revival of Nixon in China.
Role Rodelinda
Seria effect
While it must be admitted that Elza van den Heever doesn’t have an ideally warm and agile Handel voice, she evidenced fierce control over her instrument and skillfully built a powerful portrait of the courageous Rodelida fighting for her survival.
Love, loss, and what I sang
Sunday is Handel’s 335th birthday, an event Trove Thursday celebrates with Rodelinda, Regina de’Longobardi, one of the composer’s most popular works.
Rodelinda, regina del primo piano
I half-wanted to dislike it; my expectations were very low. Renée Fleming in the Baroque, after her very uncertain recent outings in bel canto! Let’s face it; this year, her Rossini (Armida) and Donizetti (Lucrezia Borgia) did not cover her in glory. How, at this HD relay on December 3, would she cope with Handel’s […]
The long and winding Rodelinda
Point/Counterpoint from the wellsung twins: Jonathan: “Renee Fleming is a disaster as Rodelinda. What the hell is going on? WHY does she sing this rep? It was like one big slur that lasted for four hours. I did not hear one consonant, and there was no sense whatsoever of where one note ended and another […]
Role Rosina
Back to the future
After putting a hiatus on their awards in 2020 and 2021 (for reasons that are all too well-known to all of us), the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala returned on Sunday evening November 13 honoring soprano Angel Blue the 2022 Award winner.
Role Rusalka
Poor wan Rusalka
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.
Destination moon
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.
Role Sandrina
Over the garden wall
Renée Fleming makes her belated “Trove Thursday” debut as Sandrina in a rare early performance of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera.
Role Susannah
Filth and dementia
Zachary Woolfe reflects on the legacy of parterre box founder James Jorden and three decades of “remembering when opera was queer and dangerous and exciting and making it that way again”
By Zachary Woolfe
21 comments
Role Tatyana
Final curtain
“Trove Thursday” pays tribute to Dmitri Hrovostovsky with a broadcast of his final new role, Rubinstein’s The Demon.
Role Thaïs
The People’s Courtesan
Like Liza Minnelli at the Palace or Nomi Malone in Goddess, Renée Fleming‘s Thaïs is better understood as diva event than Gesamtkunstwerk. It’s an opportunity to watch a star lady do her voodoo in a work that exists largely to showcase her glamour and appeal.
is it the girl or is it the gown?
“The campy diva lover in me should exult at the credit in the program ‘Renée Fleming‘s Costumes by Christian Lacroix,’ but in fact the couturier’s frocks were something of a mishmash. Best was a shimmering gold sheath that set off Fleming’s first entrance and trim waistline to perfection; worst was a rumpled ivory silk ballgown […]
divan decadence
Our Own Gualtier Maldè reports: Not every opera has to be a masterpiece. I couldn’t subsist on a steady diet of Tristan und Isolde, Die Zauberfloete, Fidelio, plus Otello, Falstaff et al. Frankly the occasional light comic bonbon or trashy but fun melodramatic tunefest makes a nice palate cleanser. I am talking Adriana Lecouvreur, La […]
Role unknown
Pout and about
I could feel my face (to say nothing of my spirits) sink as I opened an envelope from La Cieca containing a new Decca CD
to review.
Role Violetta
Three faces of Violetta
Christopher Corwin surveys the three Traviata casts — led by Lisette Oropesa, Rosa Feola, and Ermonela Jaho — at the Met this spring.
À l’opéra ce soir
When I was a kid growing up in Paris, there was a weekly TV broadcast of a theater play called Au Théatre Ce Soir that I loved. But that my father would rarely let me watch this show, because the plays were all were silly comedies, usually badly acted and filmed without any creativity or […]
i want to liveblog!
Tuesday morning: A further report from Lindoro Almaviva: Over all the night was a success d’estime. It was a Renee worship night and we got just that. I am sure you will be able to talk in better terms about the singing or lack thereof. My impression is that Renee had an “acting” night, as […]
requiem and rehearsal
La Cieca’s spy reports on the Met’s pre-season:Â
Role Virginia Woolf
Women of the Hours
In its first go-around in November 2022, Kevin Puts’s The Hours (libretto by Greg Pierce based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the screenplay for the Stephen Daldry’s 2002 film was a box office bullseye for the Metropolitan Opera.
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).
