Don’t worry: no clips from The Music Lovers to mark the 170th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Instead, after the jump, a treat from the summer of 2009.
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Wearing her own hair (in a Zeffirelli production!) and sounding fabulous: a snippet of Anna Netrebko‘s Micaëla from Vienna on May 3.
Reviewing a CD of someone you have never heard live is always a dicey proposition. As we all know, a voice sounds very different in a big hall than it does up-close and personal. So if Marc Hervieux is your favorite new tenor, please don’t put me in the “crosshairs” just yet. I freely admit…
The setting is Salzburg, September of 2009. Anna Netrebko and Daniel Barenboim partnered for a recital with lofty aspirations and difficult works mere months after her unfortunate Lucia at the Met. Thanks to the foresight to record this evening, we now have a record of a great night – hopefully a turning point – in…
The cancellation of Anna Netrebko of her Vienna performances of I puritani — on five days’ notice — inspires La Cieca to introduce an all-new tag relevant to this sort of event.
Angela Gheorghiu will sing Mimì at the Met’s last performance of Boheme this season tomorrow afternoon, replacing Anna Netrebko who is ill. Angie’s in town (already?) in preparation for her performances in La traviata beginning March 29.
This afternoon’s broadcast of La bohème (beginning at 1:00 pm) is sure to provoke lots of commentary from the parterriani. Conductor: Marco Armiliato; Mimì: Anna Netrebko; Musetta: Nicole Cabell; Rodolfo: Piotr Beczala; Marcello: Gerald Finley; Schaunard: Massimo Cavalletti; Colline: Oren Gradus; Benoit/Alcindoro: Paul Plishka.
“Anna Netrebko‘s gorgeous lyric soprano proved an ideal fit for the role of tubercular seamstress Mimi. Like a great wine, her voice is sweet but complex, vivid with overtones. She acted with a calm, fatalistic quality, even in the death scene, where many singers overdo the coughing. Here Netrebko suggested waning strength by gradually letting…
“The Met’s been cleaning house of its lavish Franco Zeffirelli productions, mothballing his Tosca and Carmen earlier this season. But his staging of Puccini’s La Boheme remains a keeper, packing a punch 28 years after its premiere.” Our Own JJ goes gaga for Anna in the New York Post.
UPDATE: A spokesman for Anna Netrebko just has informed La Cieca “Anna is not pregnant.” An Austrian website thie morning reported the rumor that Anna Netrebko is expecting again. [OE24.at]
La Cieca has just been entrusted with a veritable cornucopia of future lore about our beloved Metropolitan Opera. You must remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future. And what happens in the future stays in the future. Anyway, shall we? La Cieca thought you’d never ask.
The indisputable star of the new Naxos DVD of Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac, filmed at the Palau de les Arts ‘Reina Sofia’ in Valencia and directed by Michal Znaniecki, is, as in all other stage, operatic and film adaptations of the Cyrano story, the enormous prosthetic nose worn by the title character. The nose…
“I can tell you honestly, I’m not that passionate anymore about singing and all this stuff, you know?” [New York Observer]
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.
La Cieca is delighted to announce the 2009-2010 Saturday afternoon broadcast season brought to you by the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera Radio Network, beginning December 12. For each of these broadcasts, La Cieca will host (or at least leave the doors open for) a chat amongst the cher public.
It’s no easy easy task to “re-review” one of the most discussed and scrutinized opera productions of the last few years. Mary Zimmerman’s mise-en-scène of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor has been extensively examined since it was chosen to inaugurate the 2007/08 season of the Metropolitan Opera, provoking very mixed reactions both from the professional critics…
Edgar has always been the odd man out in the Puccini canon, lying well outside the standard rep. The recent discovery of forty minutes of additional music is likely to do little to change that, but the find was momentous enough to merit a world premier of the newly restored Four Act version of Puccini’s…
So, was anyone at Saturday night’s performance by the Boston Symphony? How’s James Levine doing with that back problem? And doesn’t it seem that a maestro who has had a history of delicate health should maybe at this point decide whether he wants BSO or the Met — particularly when both these organizations have elaborate…
Presenting just for you, cher public, the complete Sirius/XM Metropolitan Opera broadcast schedule for 2009-1010. Performances on dates highlighted in bold will also be streamed via RealNetworks from the Met’s website. Season premieres are marked with (P). Obviously you are going to want to chat about some of these broadcasts, so let La Cieca know in…
Angela Gheorghiu, not to be outdone by Anna Netrebko‘s cancellation of Violetta in 2010, has just announced that she will not sing Carmen in 2009. According to the Romanian diva’s website, “With deep regret Angela Gheorghiu has to announce that she has to withdraw just from the new production of CARMEN at the MET later…
Anna Netrebko will not sing Violetta in New York during the 2010-2011 season, La Cieca has learned. The long-expected La traviata (as discussed on Met Futures and elsewhere) was to be a version of the Willy Decker production the soprano did at Salzburg in 2005. According to an interview the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Netrebko has…
Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala are seen (briefly) in this clip from Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, as produced at Baden-Baden.
Is it for the sake of gay pride in San Francisco, or it is the relief of getting that massive whonking tiara off her pretty noggin? Either way, Anna Netrebko is singing Traviata better now than she was in April. (Sound clip after the jump.)
La Cieca is fully aware that Anna Netrebko is a dress size or two bigger now than she was a couple of years ago. And yet, there is no excuse, no excuse I tell you, to transform the young courtesan Violetta Valery into the middle-aged dowager Mrs. Claypool. Now, La Cieca has a couple of…
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