Hop on pops
Carnegie Hall’s season opener last night fetched the usual glitterati.
carnegie hall
Panglossed over
Celebrating Lenny’s 100th this year has made Candide ubiquitous at opera houses worldwide.
They live by night
A heady audience paid top price to pack Carnegie Hall Thursday for just 80 minutes of unstaged Wagner.
Less than hero
Iestyn Davies’s theatrical blandness combined with his vocal unsuitability for the role left a hole at the center of Rinaldo.
Flour song
Touting an austere, governessy program—the hour-and-change Schubert/Müller cycle, Die schöne Müllerin—Jonas Kaufman fulfilled his long-awaited, high-profile return to Carnegie Hall last night.
And now a word…
One of parterre’s most faithful sponsors begins a campaign today highlighting programs by the world’s greatest singers: let’s hear it for Carnegie Hall!
One Handel, one heart
I don’t usually attend a performance of an opera I’ve known well most of my life expecting a revelation.
“Thy power standeth not in multitude nor thy might in strong men”
An unstaged performance of Juditha Triumphans by five soloists and the Venice Baroque Orchestra under Andrea Marcon.
Together again for the first time
From Unnatural Acts of Opera, a duo concert with Shirley Verrett and Grace Bumbry at Carnegie Hall.
Trauermarsch
I can scarcely remember a performance where so many conflicting thoughts raced through my mind as happened Thursday night during the Met Orchestra’s “bleeding chunks” of Wagner’s Ring at Carnegie Hall.
The good, the bad and the Haydn
In a striking program at Carnegie Hall last night, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s), with guest vocalist Susan Graham, brought together a wide array of musical proclivities—good and good bad taste alike.
From Steamboat Springs to La Paz
“Finally, Ms. Fleming reveals a completely different side of her artistry: her life-long passion for jazz…”
Aged in blood
Simply put, Christine Goerke is a stupendous Elektra.
Elektral college
La Cieca thought the cher public might like to share some of their favorite Elektra videos and anecdotes.
Lips together, teeth apart
Mr. Peabody, that Leonardo among canines, claimed she was suffering from toothache.
Bows and arias
Whenever opera-lovers are canvassed about what neglected operas they hunger to see revived, the resulting lists inevitably feature a goodly number of grand operas, those once wildly popular monstrosities–particularly by Meyerbeer–written primarily for Paris in the mid-19th century.
In witch we serve
Sunday afternoon’s intermittently involving concert performance of Handel’s Alcina at Carnegie Hall starred an unusually intense Joyce DiDonato as a powerful sorceress blinded by her romantic delusions.
Whispers and cries
We were not at Carnegie Hall to hear superb opera singers bestow their vocalism upon Alban Berg’s Wozzeck; we are there to hear the Wiener Staatsoper’s house band work their magic upon an intricate, spooky, devastating score.
Theodora goes wild
Joined by the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, The English Concert concluded the US leg of its current tour at Carnegie Hall Sunday with a complete performance of the darkly moving Theodora, Handel’s penultimate oratorio.
Light my foyer
Each year, Leon Botstein leads the American Symphony Orchestra in a concert opera or two.
Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable
André Previn‘s A Streetcar Named Desire, with the “People’s Diva” herself in the iconic role of the unstable Blanche DuBois.
Red sauce
La Cieca has put her little grey cells to work and deduced that Opera Orchestra of New York will present two performances next season…
“Dark” victories
All La Cieca can say is that so very many of you here shine in diamond splendor, and she only hopes she can stream even a single ray of light into the night of your heart. The results of the “Ian Bostridge” competition are after the jump.
Glitter and be blind
Which tenor twink was cruising everything in pants in the men’s room at Carnegie Hall tonight? And do you think he will behave thus when he returns to the Met later this season?
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).
