As portrayed by Vittorio Grigolo, Nemorino was a manic self-absorbed, probably bipolar, stalker who—against all odds and good sense—gets the poor girl.
These days a cadre of voluble opera-goers regularly issues dire warnings that anyone about to attend this or that production at the Met should close her eyes and just listen rather than witness yet another Peter Gelb regie “atrocity.”
It took the better part of a decade—including two high-profile cancelations—or New York to finally hear Anna Netrebko in recital.
Vittorio Grigolo in the title role of the Met’s revival of Les Contes d’Hoffman is the opera version of the charming homeless drunk.
Olga Peretyatko has officially left the chorus.
I fall on my knees before this new live recording
issued by the San Francisco Symphony.
La bohème is such a popular romantic opera that hardly anyone ever notices that Mimì and Rodolfo undergo what in modern terms would be called speed dating.
When Norman Lebrecht is declaring on an almost daily basis that classical music is dead, it’s perhaps heartening that four of today’s prominent tenors have recently released what might be called fluff/vanity albums.
This afternoon at the Met, Grigolo sold his performance like the rent was due tomorrow and he was down to his last penny.
I never thought I’d see the day when Giuseppe Verdi and Benjamin Britten would battle it out for musical superiority but that’s exactly what happened in Los Angeles this year.
Here’s the thing about puns, Betsy: summer going to enjoy them and summer not.
Reflecting my new mantra — “and would have gone on longer, had he not died” – here is The Curate’s Egg edition of the Saturday breakdown.
Once again, La Cieca can do no better than to quote the ineffable BAB, who says, “The beauty of the Saturday afternoon Chats this summer has been that everyone picks what they want and then we compare notes with what’s happening elsewhere. Ordinarily I make no recommendations, but I have decided to do things differently…
“So, how is this new Pavarotti?” or, “This young tenor, what’s his name, I saw him on the morning show, is he any good?” When people who have never set foot inside an opera house—and know Maria Callas chiefly as the woman Aristotle Onassis dumped for Jacqueline Kennedy—start asking me such questions, then I…
It may seem quixotic that La Cieca subscribes to Opera News, and the print version at that, but, after all, the dear people there were kind enough to interview Our Own JJ last summer on the subject of this very cum-blog, so, well, noblesse oblige and all that, you know. Since the mag is showing…
New Kid on the Plaza Drammy writes: April 9, 2009. A traditional Otto Schenk production featuring Diana Damrau as Gilda and who cares but.. Frizza conducting, Viktoria Vizin as Maddalena, Calleja as the Duke, Frontali as Rigoletto, Aceto as Sparafucile. Stellar performances from the entire cast, excepting poor Mr Frontali. The set was phenomenal –…
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…
La Cieca introduces a new feature on parterre.com, the guest review. First up to bat is longtime print zine stalwart Little Stevie, who saw Lucia di Lammermoor last night. Take this as you will: based on this evenings performance the new Met Lucia is pretty bad. The acclaimed Ms. Zimmerman simply doesn’t know how to…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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