Everyone’s favorite Kiwi songbird, Dame Kiri te Kanawa, is being sued by an Australian promoter because she didn’t show for a series of crossover concerts. The diva was to appear opposite Oz pop star John “The Voice” Farnham, whom she found overly chatty onstage. Says Farnham, “[Dame Kiri] is probably not used to an audience…

By on July 05, 2005 at 5:30 PM
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Debuting today on Il Gran Teatro della Cieca, “Femmes Fatales,” a program featuring deadly divas. Featured are complete and demented performances of L’incoronazione di Poppea, Macbeth, Samson et Dalila, Jenufa and Turandot. The lethal lovelies in question are Anna Caterina Antonacci, Shirley Verrett, Oralia Dominguez, Anja Silja and Montserrat Caballe; victims and co-conspirators include David…

By on June 19, 2005 at 4:00 AM
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Mean, moody, magnificent Mari Lyn has finally (if posthumously) made her debut on DVD, thanks to the equally (if not more so) magnificent Donald Collup. Mme. Lyn, variously called “Hogcolleratura” and “La Traviyenta,” regaled the public access airwaves in the mid-1980s with a series called “The Golden Treasury of Song,” featuring the blond-bewigged “singing hostess”…

By on June 16, 2005 at 11:56 PM
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Even as La Cieca writes this, the evergreen Vera Galupe-Borszkh is preparing to go onstage for her first-ever Duchesse de Krakenthorp in Michigan Opera Theater’s Fille du Regiment. As La Cieca understands it (reports are somewhat sketchy thus far), La Dementia is graciously jumping in at short notice for Shirley Verrett, who has sung(?) the…

By on June 12, 2005 at 3:01 AM
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So La Cieca has been thinking about joining the pod people; that is, she wants to try her hand at podcasting. One idea off the top of La Cieca’s well-coiffed head is something called “Daily Dose of Diva,” a mix of some of my favorite opera recordings and a bit of yakking thrown in. But…

By on June 10, 2005 at 2:08 PM
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Those clips from Forza La Cieca posted a couple of weeks ago got her obsessing on Renata Tebaldi, surely one of the healthier obsessions! So La Cieca has launched a new web radio show, “A Tebaldi Festival,” over 10 hours of all-live prime Tebaldi. Featured are complete performances of La forza del destino (Florence, 1953),…

By on June 04, 2005 at 10:17 PM
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A presence from beyond the grave walked out on a recital by Dame Kiri te Kanawa on Wednesday night in Edinburgh. Following one of her songs the Kiwi diva turned to the audience and asked, “Did you hear the footsteps during the last piece? They were behind me. I wanted to look round. You have…

By on May 27, 2005 at 2:18 PM
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All right, boys, get your bold-faced fonts out. It seems that at Oprah Winfrey‘s “Legends Ball,” none other than Leontyne Price asked specially to meet fellow guest/legend Mariah Carey. La Carey (who admits that at first she thought the diva mistook her for someone else) reports that Lee chatted with her about her music and…

By on May 25, 2005 at 6:02 PM
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The Met’s so-called “Millo Pole” will no doubt tonight be swarming with cognoscenti, or as we like to call them around here, opera queens. Aprile Millo sings her only staged Tosca of the Met’s season, and that’s reason enough to shlep over to Lincoln Center. (Millo had a big personal success in Ballo last month,…

By on May 19, 2005 at 4:17 PM
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The Impresarios The Ballad of Billy Budd All About Steve A Bitchy Class Just Jessye! Ain’t it a pretty voice? Valley of the Divas The Texaco Opera Queens New Roles for Cecilia Bartoli Bartoli Meets Swenson Beefcake in Opera Ten Rules for Stage Directors Ten Questions You’ll Never Hear on the Opera Quiz Missed Opportunities…

By on March 06, 2005 at 8:06 PM
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Which diva, star of a new production that was one of the Met’s hottest tickets of recent years, has refused to repeat her role in a future season because she can’t stand the staging? We’ll hear her sing a different title role instead.

By on December 20, 2004 at 10:33 PM
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Let the dancing in the streets begin! Jonathan Miller, who has spent the last two decades multitasking between creating pretentiously dull opera productions and whingeing about the stupidity of opera and opera singers, has at long last decided to call it quits. Following a sure-to-be-listless staging of La Clemenza di Tito in April 2005, the…

By on November 22, 2004 at 1:35 PM
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Just imagine! The legend herself, Anja Silja taking time out of a busy rehearsal schedule (and despite her concern about the orchestra, problematic in early runthroughs)—to talk to parterre box. I confess I imagined she would be at least a little bit like her character of Emilia Marty—cynical, burned out, impatient. What a surprise, then,…

By on January 17, 1999 at 11:11 PM
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