On her 90th birthday “Trove Thursday” presents the late great Belgian mezzo Rita Gorr parenting Régine Crespin in Massenet’s Hérodiade.
Your doyenne and her faithful confidante Dawn Fatale are off later this week for a safari, seeking the wild Regie in its natural habitat.
Donkey dick and other Asian Fusion vaudeville acts arouse “The BAM Effect” at Handel’s Semele.
In response to repeated urging by La Cieca, Our Own Dawn Fatale has contributed a “to do” list for the benefit of Met management, assuming the company makes it out of this summer alive.
Our Own Dawn Fatale (artist’s conception) will take to the airwaves of Bloomberg Radio this evening at 9:00 pm to discuss the Met’s current woes.
That day we all knew eventually would come did come, in the winter of 2001, when the final issue of parterre box, the queer opera zine was mailed out to the cher public, such as they were at the time.
In issue #46 of parterre box the queer opera zine (“Spunk”), you will find an endorsement by the legendary Astrid Varnay.
Devotees of Dawn Fatale (and you are legion!) will be delighted to hear that the parterre scribe made an early (2001!) appearance in issue #45 of parterre box, the queer opera zine, ranting about the “squish-squish school of opera direction.”
In a slight detour from the usual all-opera-all-the-time format of parterre box, the queer opera zine, issue #44 centers on Ben Letzler‘s superb appreciation of film and cabaret diva Zarah Leander.
With issue #42a, “City of Dreams,” parterre box the queer opera zine returns at least temporarily to a rational numbering system.
In Issue #40 of parterre box, the queer opera zine, Our Own JJ nabs lengthy interviews with critic John Ardoin and tenor Richard Leech.
The very first words in this issue are “Renata Scotto will return to the American operatic stage in the 2001 season!”
The celebrated “lost” issue of parterre box, the queer opera zine (now found, thanks to the avid cataloging of Indiana Loiterer III.)
“Ogni Cura si doni al diletto / E s’accorra nel magico petto,” the joke went back in the late ’90s. What wags we were!
“La Cieca cannot imagine it is much fun to sing ‘Dove sono’ when you’re suffering a fresh case of the Reno jumpy-wumps.”
Vintage issue #33
In Vintage Issue #32: How that opening night of Lohengrin might have gone; La Cieca on La Gran Scena…
The ENO was filled with ghosts last week. Spectral, possibly illusory figures fleetingly materialized in the Internet chatrooms that provide the setting for much of Nico Muhly’s new opera Two Boys, and brutal boarding school memories came back to troubled life in director Christopher Alden’s dark take on Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Or, for those of you who don’t take pleasure as La Cieca does in inventing totally bogus German compound words, Itinerary for the Regie Tour. Your doyenne and faithful sidekick Dawn Fatale (also pictured) will be hitting the continent later this week for a taste of productions done in the German style. Any European members…
In the summer of 2007, at the height of the heated speculation and public debates over who would succeed Wolfgang Wagner as the head of the Bayreuth Festival, his daughter, Katharina Wagner presented a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the festival, replacing the mind-numbingly boring one by her father (his third at…
Dawn Fatale (pictured) shares with us a horoscope:
I’m not sure who I find more annoying – the partisans who vigorously defend Luc Bondy‘s production of Tosca at the Met or those who decry it. As Bondy’s production replaces one of the Met’s signature offerings, both groups have seized on this event as a watershed event in the history of opera in America…
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.
