Is Manon Lescaut a cold, clinical tale of the splendors and pitfalls of transactional sex, or is it a romantic Italian opera at its most lush and melodic?
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.
If you had told me 20 years ago that at some point in the future I would have over 550 of the Metropolitan Opera’s performances, audio and video, at my command with the touch of a button I would say my eulogy had just been read and I’d been taken to my reward.
When LaCieca asked me to choose my favorite live recording, I had to think… and think.
Our Own Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin celebrates tonight’s opening of the season at the Met with an opening night from the past: a 1967 performance of La traviata.
Even before Italian diva Mariella Devia had completed the stunning high D natural that capped her miraculous portrayal of Elisabetta in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux Thursday evening at Carnegie Hall, tens, then hundreds of those in attendance leapt to their feet to shout their acclaim.
Once upon a time, a man and a woman met. He could sing, she could sing. They fell in love, got married, and became a power couple to rival Billary.
We must be doubly grateful that The English Concert’s recent Theodora was so quickly followed by the American Classical Orchestra’s fine Samson on Tuesday evening at Alice Tully Hall.
Joined by the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, The English Concert concluded the US leg of its current tour at Carnegie Hall Sunday with a complete performance of the darkly moving Theodora, Handel’s penultimate oratorio.
Well, “extreme” is such an, oh, how shall I put it… extreme word, my dears; really La Cieca is no more than the humble intermediary here between Mike Richter‘s CD-ROMs and you, the cher public. This time our treat from the trove is Eugene Onegin, a selection from his disc devoted to the Metropolitan Opera…
Name a Verdi opera, based on a play by Voltaire, described in the immortal words of the composer as “Questo e proprio brutto.”
Yes, the plot of Luisa Miller is a novella, and a pleasantly juicy one at that.
Sony Classical, in association with The Metropolitan Opera, has begun issuing on CD a number of historic Met broadcasts, newly remastered. The first I received for review was the December 10, 1955 broadcast of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, perhaps most notable for the Ulrica of Marian Anderson, who earlier that year made her debut…
Long ago, in a galaxy far away – I mean, the era before supertitles became common in opera houses around the world – you could always tell the text-mad opera fan. He was the one who arrived early to the theater and spent the remaining minutes to curtain hunched over his libretto booklet, trying to…
The annual Richard Tucker gala came and went at Avery Fisher Hall with the usual quota of gaffes, wardrobe malfunctions, no-shows, too-much-shows, substitutions and surprise guests (well, guest). And sandwiched between the routine, the egocentric and the just plain dull were moments of true dementia, the moments that we melomanes live and die for. Most…
So, I was asking my friends with Met Opera insider connections about the new Hoffmann production directed by Bartlett Sher. Seemingly conceived under an unlucky star, this production first lost two of its four heroines when Anna Netrebko decided not sing Olympia and Giulietta but kept Antonia and also Stella, leaving the dramaturgy somewhat lopsided.
So, was last night a triumph or a disaster? Well, it was neither since the role of Radames doesn’t play to all of Roberto Alagna‘s strengths but it was a very fine showing by a distinctive and sensitive artist in a repertory that isn’t his natural metier. The evening’s biggest triumph was scored by old…
Just a few quick words about the magnificent soprano Antonietta Stella, the “tie-breaker” in our recent quiz. She is perhaps not quite so familiar to some of La Cieca’s readers as the more celebrated divas also heard on the track such as Tebaldi and Price. La Cieca will quote her dear colleague Enzo Bordello, who…
Two legendary artists are captured in the freshness of vocal youth in this week’s podcast. Richard Tucker and Victoria de los Angeles star in a production of Gounod’s Faust from the New Orleans Opera, February 26, 1953. Unnatural Acts of Opera
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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