Several of you cher public have been kind enough to forward to me an email from Peter Gelb offering the Met’s apology for the debacle of the first day of subscriber ticket exchanges. Though La Cieca has sneered a bit at the Buoso Donati contingent, she certainly can understand why loyal subscribers might feel that…
My dears, you only thought the whingeing about the Met ticket exchange line was over. Now that the shell-shocked and frostbitten survivors of the Gelb Gulag have dragged themselves back to their rent-controlled flats on upper Columbus Avenue, the next stage of the protest against the Met’s barbaric practices can begin. As in every violent…
Those muckraking scamps over at Opera News are at it again, quoting a in their June issue a particularly inflammatory passage from the mad gay diaries of mad gay Cecil Beaton. Dear Cecil, you will recall, designed the Met’s celebrated 1961 production of Turandot that starred Birgit Nilsson. It seems that mere critical and popular…
La Cieca thanks a particularly loyal member of the cher public for pointing out the most recent bit of hard-hitting arts coverage in the Wall Street Journal, as copied and pasted by that hardest of all arts hitters, Terry Teachout. La Cieca says “copied and pasted” because in this piece Teachout manages to blather on…
[This article originally appeared in the print zine precursor to this site, one of a series of surveys of live recordings by critic Leila de Lakmé.] Leyla Gencer. The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas,…
I thought that it would be fun to tell you about a little concert last Sunday here in Montréal, with Renée Fleming, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato and Matthew Polenzani. It was actually the first time that I have heard any of them in the flesh, so I was most curious to see if the voices…
In what La Cieca hopes may be a quiet voice of reason, or, failing that, just for the sake of clarity, she would like to quote from the press release announcing the Met’s program for the summer of 2008. “We are trying something new this summer, which we think will be especially appealing to all…
[Our Own Gualtier Maldè reports from this afternoon’s dress rehearsal of La Fille du Régiment] The Met has another hit on its hands — though not a totally new one, this production and cast already having triumphed at Covent Garden and the Vienna Staatsoper. Laurent Pelly (who vies with Davide Alagna and Mark Streshinsky as…
In all the publicity surrounding last week’s memorials to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a far more put-upon martyr has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. Celebrated freedom fighter Franco Zeffirelli is making veiled suggestions (through a “friend”) that, should the Met mothball such “masterpieces” as his 20-year-old Tosca production, supporters of the octogenarian…
“Three situations that inspire terror in any opera singer — going on as an understudy, making a Metropolitan Opera debut, singing that most challenging of all tenor roles, Wagner’s Tristan, for the first time. On March 14, Gary Lehman took on all these challenges in a single evening, emerging a hero.” Our Own JJ comments…
A loyal member of the cher public noticed this howler by Need You Ask in the online NYT earlier today: Unfortunately for La Cieca (and, well, yes, for anyone else with journalistic standards — so sue me!) the Times has already managed to do one of their “Ministry of Truth” numbers on the offending paragraph…
Director of the Met and ENO Madama Butterfly (and librettist of the Met’s Osvaldo Golijovcommission) is dead at 54. Further details are not available at this time.
Our Own Sanford reports from this afternoon’s National Council Grand Finals Concert at the Met. First things first: No hunkentenors, but Edward Parks is a barihunk, and Christopher Magiera is almost a barihunk. Now to the important stuff. There were nine singers in the final, and I would say that 10 of them deserved to…
Guest critic Niel Rishoi reviews the VAI DVD release of Lucia di Lammermoor. OK, this is IT. Barring the cuts, this is the Lucia of Gaetano Donizetti. Not that misguided travesty at the Met, not Natalie Dessay‘s vocally juddery overwoughtness. No schtick, no Carol Burnetting around. Just Donizetti and Cammarano’s Romantic drama, pure and simple.…
Cher public, La Cieca meant to turn in early tonight, but she got one of those bees in her bonnet. This particular specimen of Apis mellifera is the “debacle” (as La Cieca has been astonished to see it termed) of Anna Netrebko‘s Juliette last Saturday afternoon. Such harsh criticism La Cieca has rarely heard since…
The legendary mezzo-soprano of the Russian Soviet period, Zara Dolukhanova, died last week at the age of 89. Though she excelled in brilliant Rossini roles in the opera house, her greatest success was as a recitalist. Dolukhanova’s broad repertoire included music from arie antiche to Prokofiev and Stravinsky; unusually for Soviet-era singers, she often included…
A helpful reader has pointed La Cieca to an interview in the current Opera News, a publication she picks up all too infrequently, alas. But the chitchat between Brian Kellow and Francesca Zambello is just too delicious to ignore. Ms. Zambello is the director of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, a show that just last week…
“Legendary maestro Tullio Serafin once said that trying to perform Bellini’s Norma without a great soprano is as futile as attempting to cook risotto without rice. This month, the Metropolitan Opera experimented with such a recipe with less than palatable results.” Our Own JJ reviews Hasmik Papian‘s Druidess in Gay City News.
Our Own Gualtier Maldè reflects on Maria Guleghina’s first Met Norma. True confession: I love Maria Guleghina, I really, really love her. I know her flaws but her strengths are such that they sweep aside severe demerits that would consign any other artist to filth. Among contemporary singers she is one artist who thinks big,…
La Cieca was just wondering about something yesterday on opera-l, and doggone if Anne Midgette wasn’t wondering about the same thing today in the New York Times. (That woman haunts my dreams, I tell you. It’s like she’s inside my head. Now, where was I? Oh, yes…) The point that dear Anne and I (among…
Last night’s season premiere of Norma at the Met restored Bellini’s opera to musical and vocal distinction but the dramatic fire was burning only fitfully. Hasmik Papian is a hugely experienced Norma who some consider to be the best contemporary exponent of the role. But the key word here is contemporary not best. Her voice…
Yet another rehash of the great voice vs. waistline debate, this time in the Chicago Daily Herald. Nicole Cabell laments the scarcity of European gyms, while “hunken-tenor” Joseph Kaiser plants his feet firmly on both sides of the fence by declaring, “Essentially if you can be healthy about being healthy, that’s the balance to find…
“When the Met last offered Verdi’s Macbeth a quarter century ago, the New York Times slammed Sir Peter Hall‘s staging as ‘the worst new production to struggle onto the Metropolitan Opera’s stage in modern history’ and the opening night audience greeted the curtain calls with some of the loudest boos in the theater’s history. On…
Our Own Little Stevie reflects on the Met’s new Macbeth. I’d like to admit a guilty pleasure of mine: I’ve secretly been waiting with a lot of anticipation for Maria Guleghina to sing in Macbeth and Norma this year. I have not told this to many people because it seems that the common expectation has…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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