For no particular reason, La Cieca has been thinking of the duet “E un anatema” from La Gioconda, and for a very particular reason, she’s been thinking of Aprile Millo. Anyway, to get the discussion started for the weekend, cher public, how’d you like to share your favorite performances of this duet, YouTube style, down…
Cher public, if you plan to see the Met’s production of From the House of the Dead (and you might as well know that she expects you move heaven and earth to do so!), La Cieca urges and entreats that you avoid reading Anthony Tommasini‘s review of the production in tomorrow’s New York Times.
La Cieca reminds the cher public that tomorrow evening will be the Metropolitan Opera premiere of From the House of the Dead, an event to be Sirius’d and RealPlayered beginning at 8:00 pm. And naturally you all are invited to listen and discuss here at your favorite virtual venue. Check back tomorrow evening for chat…
Once again we have an email from a budding member of the cher public (and you know La Cieca never could resist a budding member), so put on your thinking caps, cher hive mind, and offer a little advice:
Cher public, La Cieca would like to call your attention to the latest innovation by our webmeister Nick Scholl: threaded comments. You can now reply to a specific comment (instead of the entire thread) and thus we can avoid having to start every reply with, “squirrel, you have got to be kidding me!” (Though doubtless…
Among the “auditions” that have come flooding in from the cher public are reviews of three very different productions of Don Giovanni. Your doyenne has taken the liberty of combining the three critiques into a single posting, but she urges you to remember, remember well the names of the authors of this troika of treatises.
La Cieca invites you to enjoy a new blog from occasional member of the cher public (or member of the occasionally cher public) Crewmantle: COMMANDOpera.
In the year and half that New York City Opera has been absent from the musical milieu of our metropolis, Tony Tommasini has been sadly deprived of one of his favorite topics of conversation.
The BBC 3 broadcast of Tristan und Isolde that so captivated the cher public yesterday afternoon is available in streaming form for the next week.
Two weeks the cher public have had to ponder our most recent Regie quiz, and yet none of the usual suspects were able to work out the obvious clues. A Victorian ingenue and her doting father are interviewed by an Italian fascist in a Rita Hayworth wig?
A special Halloween trick (or is it a treat?) for the cher public.
At this point, Maria Guleghina is still listed as tonight’s Turandot at the Met. Any of the cher public attending this performance are encouraged to share news, reviews and scuttlebutt about what did or did not happen (broad enough for you?) here in the comments section.
La Cieca hopes you will enjoy the following little video (shared with us by the lovely and personable kashania) and that you will be inspired to go and do likewise. (You know what the comments section is for!)
The response to the critic auditions post has been something more than gratifying, cher public, with over 30 of you competing for entry into one of La Cieca’s limited number of slots.
The Random Number Generator has spoken, and from the whopping 442 comments offered during the Turandot Chat, the randomly chosen winner of the Cecilia Bartoli Sacrificium CD is #185, as written by….. Our Own squirrel. Congratulations, to you, o little nut-hoarder, and La Cieca asks that you email her a shipping address where your CD…
La Cieca is holding auditions this week, looking for a few good reviewers of opera CDs and DVDs.
La Cieca invites the newly reunited cher public to participate in an archeological dig scavenger hunt puzzle quiz promoting the new “Sacrificium” CD from Cecilia Bartoli. Ready to play? Well, first you have to answer this question: Farinelli’s remains were exhumed in 2006 from this cemetery in Bologna? Most of you surely know the answer,…
Even though La Cieca is sure you will agree with her that “Meglio stasera, che domani o mai. Domani chi lo sa, quel che sarà,” the fact is the server people are still working on parterre.com with a “go” time set for sometime early tomorrow. Be assured that your doyenne will inform you here at…
From the Orders Report for La Cieca’s Amazon store for October 23, 2009: And a reminder, cher public, even though La Cieca is coming to you from an alien server until tomorrow, the Little Shop of Arias is still in business.
Just for the sake of everyone’s convenience, cher public, La Cieca asks you to identify yourself with your comments. You don’t need to log in to the site; just use the”Name/URL” option in “Choose an identity” section of the comments form. Again, this is a temporary measure until we get back to good old parterre.com.
Welcome, cher public, to the temporary home of parterre box during our move to a new server. Please continue commenting and otherwise shmoozing here through the evening of Saturday the 24th.
First was littoraldrift, but funniest was Krunoslav in our most recent and (as one might say) entry-level Regie quiz, the answer to which was rather too obviously Falstaff. So, on to something more challenging this week, after the jump.
Four of the cher public caught yesterday’s HD presentation of Tosca and have agreed to share their impressions with La Cieca and the rest: “The death of Puccini’s Tosca was much exaggerated, in fact it did not take place.” “After about 34 years of going to the opera, I don’t think I’ve ever left a…
Actually, only a single riddle, cher public, but perhaps a baffling one.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
