Zukunftsmiausik
Leave it to a cat to transform a Wagner festival into the Jellicle Ball.
amazon
Express your elf!
La Cieca (pictured) would like to remind those members of the cher public with last-minute gift shopping needs that purchases from the Little Shop of Arias completed today (Friday) can still reach the recipient by December 24.
Fill up the stocking
La Cieca has once again hauled out the holly, filled up the stocking, sliced up the fruitcake and hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.
Something for everyone
From historical documents to the dernier cri of regie, October’s new DVD releases are a potpourri of objets d’art.
Fifty Shades of Great
Those adorable kids over at EMI Classics have followed up the ridiculous with the sublime: an mp3 download of 50 arias (over four hours of music) sung by Maria Callas for… are you ready? 99 cents.
The Wurm turns
The Met’s controversial Ring cycle, directed by Robert Lepage (not pictured) and conducted by TBA (possibly pictured) makes its home video debut on September 11.
Uncle Smania
Scoring the Fire and Music contest was tricky, cher public, as the selections were both quite brief and relatively obscure.
Nun der Quiz mich müd gemacht
After a brilliantly collaborative start, the cher public fell just short of deciphering the complete Beim Schlafengehen quiz, though several of you did very well indeed.
A disc fit for the gods
As we lurch into the month of July, La Cieca (not pictured, one hopes) wants quietly but firmly to draw the attention of her cher public to some of the more interesting releases on audio and video newly available on Amazon.com.
Viva, viva il nostro Alcide!
Congratulations to Cesare 15 (pictured, right) who came, saw and—after a false start or two—conquered in the very challenging “Piangerò” quiz devised by Our Own DeCaffarrelli!
Czech mate
At first glance, Ivor Bolton, Chief Conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, would seem an odd choice to lead Jenufa, Janacek’s grim tale of infanticide and oppressive village morality.
Hier bleibt Elektra
The Met has finally released the contents of the James Levine 40th Anniversary box sets separately for those of us who didn’t have $500 lying around.
Hats off!
The stunning New Broadway Cast Recording
of Sondheim’s Follies is currently on sale on Amazon for an astonishing $4.99.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Swim
More innovative casting from amazon.com.
Atys for two
For those of you not fortunate or not conscientious enough to attend Atys at BAM this week, there’s a video document of the production (taped earlier this year) following the jump.
Wrap music
La Cieca invites the cher public to visit The Little Shop of Arias (your doyenne’s Amazon store) for all those last-minute holiday shopping needs!
Vergin territory
Incredible, but true, I Puritani had not been performed in Great Britain since 1887 when Glyndebourne decided to stage it in 1960 with the main intention to showcase Joan Sutherland, who had been catapulted to international superstardom one year earlier in the legendary Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden. Furthermore, Vittorio Gui, who had already […]
Box on boxes
Now available on Amazon.com: James Levine: Celebrating 40 Years at the Met – CD Box Set and James Levine: Celebrating 40 Years at the Met – DVD Box Set, as recently reviewed on parterre.com.
How much is that puppy in the window?
At the request of a member of the cher public, La Cieca has updated the Little Shop of Arias store here at parterre. Available for preorder from amazon.com are such goodies as a new DVD of I puritani starring Nino Machaidze and Juan Diego Flórez.
Snake charmer
A long-awaited DVD from the Met documents one of the great “42nd Street” episodes in operatic history: on December 20, 1980, a largely unknown Julia Migenes (or Migenes-Johnson, as she was called in those days) stepped in on a few hours’ notice for an ailing Teresa Stratas as the anti-heroine of Berg’s Lulu. A prodigiously […]
Earthy Pleasures
There is no cry heard more often these days than, “Where are all the Verdi sopranos?!?” Yes, there was a day when we had the likes of Aprile Millo, Eva Marton, Leontyne Price, Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Leonie Rysanek, Zinka Milanov and Antonietta Stella all singing in the same, say 25 or 30 years. While […]
Turning point
The DVD of the 1980 Met telecast of Lulu is now on sale!
Vintage
Sometime in the late 1950s, the management at Glyndebourne had the good idea to make archival recordings of the performances there, and these recordings, duly remastered and transferred to digital form, are gradually coming before the public through Glyndebourne’s house label. Thus it is that we find ourselves with this early release, a recording of […]
Girl of the moment
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 […]
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).
