The atmosphere around Gotham may become rather more bizarre sometime in the next couple of years when Rufus Wainwright brings his opera Prima Donna into New York.
La Cieca has to admit that what she thought would be a bang-up notion turned out to be a total damp squib: the “Letter” competition failed to rouse much interest. The sole (albeit very fine) entry follows the jump.
Was our last Regie quiz too easy? Quite a few of you (led by operacat) correctly recognized in the wartorn landscape a glimmer of I puritani. This week, La Cieca sends in the clowns (among others). Remember, cher public, honest guesses only: no blurting out the answer if you recognize the production!
La Cieca is proud to relaunch a completely overhauled parterre.com, previously seen in fragments, dribs and drabs, but now here to stay. The new look features a return to the (now) retro punky aesthetic of the early ’90s zine, updated fonts and all sorts of other improvements intended to enhance your reading and commenting pleasure.…
According to Musical Criticism, Deborah Voigt has canceled her run of Tosca performances at the Royal Opera “due to ‘acute colitis’.” As it happens, your doyenne had a tip on that cancellation late last week and for whatever reason (Michael Jackson fatigue?) she didn’t share that gossip with you. So, cher public, here’s a chance…
Our Own CerquettiFarrell guessed correctly, if cautiously that all those people in short pants were doing Salome. To be precise, it’s a Christopher Alden production for Saarbrücken. Next up, an opera that looks like it might be Salome , but it’s not. So what is it? (Remember, cher public, no blurting! If you have seen…
Meet “Opera Singer” Oksana Grigorieva. The Ukraine-born diva (seen here resting between selections during a performance of “Detskaya”) was once the girlfriend of Timothy Dalton but now is best known as “the woman behind Mel Gibson‘s billion-dollar divorce.” The Braveheart star himself produced the enceinte Grigorieva’s current single “Call My Name” (no relation to the…
Well guessed, cher public! Last week’s puzzler was indeed Der Freischütz in the Robert Wilson production designed by Viktor & Rolf “with the use of over one million Swarovski crystals.”
Cher public, talk among yourselves. La Cieca’s going for a walk!
La Cieca made monkeys of you all, cher public, with last week’s Regie quiz. The opera depicted was Henze’s Der Junge Lord, in a production by Christine Mielitz for Opernhaus Dortmund. This week’s quiz might be a little too easy, so please, cher public, if you recognize this staging, don’t blurt it out right away!
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, Renata Tebaldi, Renata Scotto, Montserrat Caballe, and Magda Olivero, all of whom shared roles in her repertoire. Ironically, Gencer has a number of important credits attached…
Member of the cher public ellerveira informs La Cieca: Juan Diego Florez has given several very fascinating interviews to the Spanish media while in Madrid for his two recitals that will replace his canceled performance of Rigoletto. He explained in some detail why he stopped singing Rigoletto (tessitura too low for his voice and if…
La Cieca’s band of elfin techies are moving parterre.com to a new hosting server. What that means to you, cher public, is that you may experience outages of posts, images or media content on this site for a few days. You’ve all been so swell for the last couple of weeks while we worked this…
Your doyenne is back, cher public, and she missed you more than she can say. Thanks to so many of you who sent messages of support!
… so good. Keep your fingers crossed, cher public, that this morning’s tweaks have ameloriated the recent unpleasantness. Meanwhile, JJ is off to hear Madame Vera.
La Cieca’s trying a new look for parterre.com, since she must confess that the light-on-dark format was beginning to get a little wearing on her aging eyes. Comments? Suggestions?
Cher public, La Cieca entreats you all to bear with her in these next few days as she tries to figure out what the hell is going wrong with WordPress and causing the site to be suspended every couple of days. In the meantime, some of the features (such as the “recent comments” section in…
A little housekeeping on this lovely spring morning, cher public. Starting today, commenters will be required to log in to the site. Most of you are already signed up and logged in as it is, so this new condition will mostly apply to new visitors to parterre.com. The login will be helpful to La Cieca…
La Cieca just listened to this new recording of Alcina starring Joyce DiDonato and Maite Beaumont. She’s not going to speak up immediately about her reactions, but will open the floor to discussion. (If you can’t see the amazon mp3 player above, please click here.)
In honor of her one-third of a century, La Cieca has at long last returned to the Sunnyside Studios to record not one but two episodes of Unnatural Acts of Opera. Finally, cher public, you can hear the last two acts of a legendary performance of Jenufa from Opera Orchestra of New York, on March…
Vesselina Kasarova is dipping her oar into dramatic mezzo waters, and, well, it’s not exactly smooth sailing. (Thanks, tamerlano, for unearthing this clip!) [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/rF1lnvkrRFY” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
Cher public, it took you 105 tries, but finally Hans Lick came up with the answer to our most recent Regie puzzler: Mitridate, Re di Ponto. More gritty realism, or at least more grit, infuses our next mystery production.Â
La Cieca (through her lovely surrogates Jeanette MacDonald and Jane Powell) wish all her cher public and all their dear mothers the joy (?) of this day!
Natalie Dessay crosses over with Michel Legrand. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/x7VyXKAvNV0″ width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] This clip is one of a number of “Perle Nere” selections (including some classic filth) to be found on YouTube channel The Cucumber Masked. (For the record, your doyenne will state that she thinks the inclusion of Rolando Villazón material at this…
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.
