Born on this day in 1909 actress, singer, and dancer Carmen Miranda.
From an exposure standpoint, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the best thing to happen to opera since Beverly Sills.
Meet the Divas In Drag Italian Opera, “bringing to life operatic divas of the past, through drag-matic lip syncs.”
It was a gloomy, chilly, rainy day in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, a perfect reflection of the sad and gloomy fates of the title characters in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s presentation of The Three Queens.
Russell Thomas’s opening aria, “Del piu sublime soglio” displayed an intense attention to the text and some surprisingly beautiful piano phrasing that I’ve never heard risked before and it brought wonder and gooseflesh.
La Cieca, fashion arbiter though she may be, cannot figure out what is going on with this day-to-evening (and then some) look Sonya Yoncheva is flaunting.
The problem with trying to revive Semiramide today is competing with the memory of the spectacular casting lavished upon the work during the golden age of the Volpe era.
On this day in 1970 the musical Coco closed at the Mark Hellinger Theater after 333 performances.
Recently, opera showed up at both Mets, the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In a starling last-minute change of programming, the Salzburg Festival has canceled all further performances of the critically-reviled Peter Stein production of Don Carlos. Weltstars Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann will instead perform My Fair Lady (pictured).
Congratulations to the winners of the eighth annual F. Paul Driscoll Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence, who were lauded at an impromptu “come as you are” get-together Sunday night at the Plaza.
Finally some video of Stefan Herheim‘s Salome production shows up on YouTube.
Last night, Jeopardy‘s Alex Trebek invaded the Met’s costume shop.
Smartly done, cher diseur de bons mots: Monsieur Hoffmann rightly guessed last week’s puzzler to be Don Giovanni. The production by Doris Dörrie is currently playing the Staatsoper Hamburg. Elsewhere, the Regie never stops, as you will see after the jump.
Three Juliettes, three different seasons of the Met’s Roméo et Juliette: Natalie Dessay in 2005, Anna Netrebko in 2007, Hei-Kyung Hong in 2011. At this rate, La Cieca predicts that the role will be performed in the nude sometime around 2025. (Photos: Dessay and Hong by Marty Sohl, Netrebko by Ken Howard.)
As if wowing a capacity crowd at his Met debut recital were not enough, protean performer Andrea Bocelli has branched out into an entirely new field as a wardrobe stylist. He’s pictured here with satisfied clients Angela Gheorghiu and Renée Fleming.
What a concept, or La Cieca should say what a concept! This is Regie at its finest and most boldly satirical, genius that makes Graham Vick look like two-day-old steak frites. For this production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, the director (unnamed, alas in the YouTube clip below) utilizes the cinematic convention of the flash-forward in…
“If [Francesca] Zambello were a composer, she would surely be Meyerbeer.” [MusicWeb International]
First things first: how are the clothes? Well, there’s enough leather to fill The Eagle ten times over, and there’s definitely fodder for intermission conversation: an adorable tweedy, puffy coat for Uldino; the pimped-out spiky bike helmet with the L.E.D. lights for Attila; all the L.E.D. lights in fact, like the ones that outline Ezio’s…
Tomorrow night’s performance of Attila promises to be a visual feast, especially for those of us whose visual aesthetic was crystallized in the 1960s era of gigantic hair, pearlized eyeshadow, liquid eyeliner and sharply tailored sportswear. And Violeta Urmana‘s look is pretty fierce too!
“A Zeffirelli, dopo le polemiche della vigilia che lo hanno opposto al soprano Daniela Dessì, da lui ritenuta non giusta per il ruolo di Violetta in questa Traviata, qualche dissenso misto agli applausi al momento di comparire in proscenio assieme a Gelmetti.” [Il Messaggero]
What happens, La Cieca imagines, when Project Runway meets Carl Maria von Weber.
“For the premiere in 1918, the Metropolitan Opera marshaled … Florence Easton, whose repertory ranged from Carmen to Brünnhilde, as Loretta, the doting Gianni Schicchi’s ingénue daughter who winds him around her little finger with the Top 10 aria ‘O mio babbino caro’.” [NYT]
The freshest imaginable gay hell in the December issue of Vogue: a fashion shoot based on the Richard Jones/Met production of Hansel and Gretel — with Lady Gaga in the Philip Langridge part! Plus… Annie Leibovitz! Grace Coddington! Marc Jacobs! Cate Blanchett! Oh, you know you want to know what’s after the jump!
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.
