Upon its commercial release three weeks ago, Tom Hooper’s film adaptation of Cats garnered instant, near-universal scorn from audiences and critics alike.
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Lawrence Brownlee “Rising” at Carnegie Hall
Tenor Lawrence Brownlee, “one of the most in-demand opera singers in the world today” (NPR), performs an anticipated program of newly commissioned works with texts drawn from great Black authors and poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Thursday, March 23 at Carnegie Hall. (Photo: Zakiyah Caldwell Burroughs)
The news from New York has been rather dire these last few weeks, cher public; La Cieca is the first to admit that.
By La Cieca
Sleep soundly tonight, Kasper Holten: your Vêpres Siciliennes casting problem has just been solved!
By La Cieca
Apparently, opera fans got the bright side of the bargain: say “Macbeth” in the theater and you court cataclysm; utter the name in the opera house and, as often as not, you merely predict disappointment.
By Greg Freed
At long last, the most closely guarded secret of 2011 (besides, you know, everything about what’s going to happen to City Opera) is about to be revealed. Ladies and public, the Second Annual Parterre Cher Public Choice Awards!
By La Cieca
“It’s just that it seems rather perverse to have cast such opulent voices and then given them not much to sing…. the role of Anna Nicole would not stretch Danielle de Niese.” Loyal parterrian Jondrytay (not pictured) looked in on the Royal Opera’s Anna Nicole and shared this thoughts on his blog Not So Wunderbar.
By La Cieca
The title of this site says it all: Fotografie orribili di cantanti.
By La Cieca
“Tyler Perry‘s… For Colored Girls does feel like a ghoulish joke, a dated horror show bordering on parody. It’s both operatic and tone deaf, with explosions of hysteria that include a drunken Macy Gray performing a back-alley abortion and the conversion of a poem spoken by [Ntozake] Shange‘s Lady in Purple into an actual opera…
By La Cieca
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…
By La Cieca
Maria Guleghina‘s Turandot on PBS right now, and, holy hell, I didn’t realize just how incredibly awful it sounded. How could anyone let such a thing be released — no, escape — on HD?
By La Cieca
The results are in for the first annual Pubie Awards, nominated and voted upon by you, the Cher Public. Turnout this year was spectacular, with some categories racking up as many as 2,647 votes. A few of the races were close, and La Cieca thinks you’ll see an upset or two among the winners, after…
By La Cieca
Dimitra Theodossiou “takes” a high E-flat at the end of Odabella’s cabaletta.
By La Cieca
You know, La Cieca lived through the 1980s, just barely, and then imagine her surprise when, midway through the 2000s, there was a revival of all that 80s stuff — shoulder pads, leggings, big hair, glitter. All of it. Well, no, not quite all of it. There was one trend of the 1980s whose revival…
By La Cieca
La Cieca listened to Sirius for a while tonight, but then her ears began to bleed. When the best singing comes from Margaret Juntwait… but I gotta tell ya, folks.
By La Cieca
Long before there was
By La Cieca
Okay, La Cieca is finally ready to add another hard and fast “don’t” to her Rules for Stage Directors. To wit: Even if a scene calls for something fantastical, and even if the mezzo doesn’t actually walk out of the production when she first sees the costume… if your imagery immediately and inevitably screams “Star…
By La Cieca
Or is La Cieca mistaken: could this rather be Alfred Deller‘s “after hours” show?
By La Cieca
Remember Dragana Jugovic del Monaco? Oh, come on, who could ever
By La Cieca
¡Mira! Mean, moody magnificent Manuela Trasobares!
By La Cieca
The life of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is almost as melodramatic as that of its heroine. Composed in the early 1930’s, the opera was well received at its 1934 Leningrad premiere, and was also a success in Moscow a couple of years later. Then one evening Stalin came to see it and…
They should have overlooked the cell phone, but arrested her for this video.
By La Cieca
La Cieca realizes it’s not quite fair to judge an artist from a few minutes of video or from what is apparently a dress rehearsal. But it doesn’t seem to be going out on much of a limb to say: this Nadja Michael can’t sing.
By La Cieca
I hate it when this happens. Rosenkavalier Duet
By La Cieca
