La Cieca has just heard that mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom died this morning at the age of 91. Her 22 year career at the Met included over 350 performances.
I have to confess that I overheard that line during the intermission of the Met’s new production of Amboise Thomas’s seldom-performed Hamlet based on Shakespeare’s oft-performed play. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Although she has made headlines on this side of the Atlantic largely because of her recent dismissal by Franco Zeffirelli from a Roman production of La traviata on the grounds of “physical inadequacy,” Daniela Dessì is a topflight star in Europe. In her native Italy she is arguably the most popular soprano currently active. Over…
Let me take you back, Parterreians, to the spring of 2009. Shortly before the Met’s new La sonnambula opened, murmurings began to be heard, rumors began to circulate. After the open dress rehearsal, reports were filed as opera fans looked on in horror. At the première, a shell-shocked audience rained down boos on the production…
The Met’s premiere production of Verdi’s Attila is terrible. Are you surprised? Attila is like a self-conscious stroll down Rodeo Drive – or even worse, to the Mall of America – reducing an opera about ruthless tyranny brought down by ruthless vengeance to a quaint and insipid fashion show.
First things first: how are the clothes? Well, there’s enough leather to fill The Eagle ten times over, and there’s definitely fodder for intermission conversation: an adorable tweedy, puffy coat for Uldino; the pimped-out spiky bike helmet with the L.E.D. lights for Attila; all the L.E.D. lights in fact, like the ones that outline Ezio’s…
The Catalan theatre company La Fura dels Baus, under the baton of Zubin Mehta, brought forth a new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in 2007 in Valencia. The brochure for the DVD release calls this “A Ring for the 21st Century” and tells us that stage director Carlus Padrissa has employed “…imagery for…
La Cieca has the first top-secret highly classified eyes-only report from inside the hermetically sealed Attila dress rehearsal at the Met. Our spy (possibly pictured above) speaks out — after the jump, naturally.
It took the Metropolitan Opera decades to catch up with the rest of the world and finally stage La Cenerentola. Gioachino Rossini’s opera buffa, one of his most beloved and accomplished works, received its belated Met debut in 1997, amidst legitimate suspicions that the new production was less a genuine desire to add a belcanto…
A brace of profiles in the March issue of Opera News engage the reader in a fascinating game of “the same, but different.” Simon Keenlyside and Paulo Szot are both baritones; both handsome, sexy men; and they’re both adept in classical and more modern musical theater forms. Both gentlemen are starring in new productions at…
I checked back in on the Met’s revival of Ariadne auf Naxos yesterday, after a messy first night one week ago that left much to the imagination. Tenor Lance Ryan had been sick that night, and the cover who took his place was not much healthier, throwing the whole cast into a panic mode that…
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.
“A German, a Peruvian and a Kiwi walk into an American theater and start speaking French: that sounds like the premise of a joke, right?” Our Own JJ reviews La fille du régiment at the Met.
La Cieca preens proudly to present a peerless pair of protégés (left to right) Squirrel and Maury D’Annato. The bromancers attended (or one should say “took in”) last night’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the Met, and as of early this afternoon they were still deconstructing.
1. Webcast technology has been refined enormously in the barely two years since the pioneering (and frustrating) effort at streaming a performance of Il Sant’Alessio. The embeddable (!) player didn’t skip once that I could see, and the sound was consistent. Neither, obviously, was exactly HD quality, but the experience felt quite seamless.
Diana Damrau joined James Levine and the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Sunday afternoon for one of Levine’s typically overloaded – er, generous – orchestral feasts. But this deeply involving marathon of German warhorses rewarded those who would submit to its somber, festive intensity.
There’s something happening at Zankel Hall. Lieder recitals are not what they used to be. Christine Schäfer threw us for a loop Wednesday night in a recital program juxtaposing just two composers – George Crumb and Henry Purcell – who have what, exactly, in common?
The host of “The Vocal Scene” and frequent commentator on the Met broad casts has died. He was 100. [WQXR] After the jump, a sampling of George Jellinek‘s legendary interviewing and programming skills.
Okay, La Cieca has sifted all the evidence thus far, and she has done Pravda-style scrutiny of what was said and what was left unsaid (particularly by Peter Gelb) in the most recent New York Times analysis of the issue, and ignoring the most recent Jeremiads from Rome on account of the fact that pretty…
One week after my visit to Amore Opera, it was time to turn my attention to Bleecker Street Opera — another heir presumptive to the throne of the defunct Amato Opera.
So the question was raised (on opera-l, actually, but La Cieca doesn’t mind discussing it in more downmarket venues): in Luc Bondy‘s production of Tosca, Karita Mattila appears in the third act in an entirely new outfit, a sort of tailored trenchcoat of dark leather-like fabric, but whatever she’s wearing, isn’t is a mistake?
My latest assignment from our doyenne has been to explore two of the many small opera companies pullulating around New York City. Some of these ensembles last l’espace d’un matin, while others have been enjoying a longer, healthier life.
1. DON’T STAGE THE OVERTURE. Surprise: Verdi and Rossini and Wagner Mozart actually worked in the theater most of their lives, so give them credit for knowing that the overture is there to get the audience in the mood, to ease their transition from “outside” to “inside.”
Everything I need to know about Bizet I learned at a Judy Chicago exhibit in 1996. Brutality against women is pervasive, and society is culpable by permitting it. Such grievances were aired at the expense of the composer’s chef d’oeuvre Carmen yesterday at La Scala’s Gala opening, viewed dal vivo at Symphony Space on 95th and Broadway.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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