Finally the reason for all that screaming at La Scala begins to emerge.
Count on the New York Times to include in a photo caption all the information you really wanted to know.
During the Munich Opera Festival performances of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (28th and 31st of July 2015) Kristine Opolais will replace Anna Netrebko in the title role.
“The cast, to a member, embraces every chance…”
“The deep stirrings that open Brokeback Mountain, the opera, rise up from the bowels of the orchestra…. And those tones are gripping.”
“…a perfect marriage of text and music, creating a series of tableau-like scenes, as if Paul’s story is being related through a series of exquisitely posed still photographs…”
Saturday afternoon at 12:30 on WQXR’s magazine show Operavore, our own JJ talks about Mathilde Marchesi and Antony Roth Costanzo discusses his Orlofsky role in the Met’s Fledermaus.
“Will the actors stepping into the iconic roles live up to the perfection of Heath Ledger and Tob[e]y Maguire?”
“The La clemenza di Tito contract will be offered as a ‘Solo Dancer’ contract and requires 8 physically fit men…. The David McVicar production…”
The scene outside the Met last night (above) and inside (after the jump).
And then she was all like, “Nuh-uh! Igor was so not gay,” and I was all like…
You have only until Sunday to catch the most heart-breaking moments seen on New York City operatic stages this season.
Director Daniel Moshel (not pictured) who created the YouTube sensation MeTube, sat down recently—and virtually—to chat with La Cieca (also not pictured.)
At last, the quintessential targeted reader of parterre.com has been identified.
After 23 years, the Queen of Carthage has finally made it to Manhattan.
I have a confession to make about Britten’s opera Billy Budd: I don’t like it very much.”
La Cieca has obtained this photo of Thomas Hampson headlining Camouflage Night at Powerhouse, uh, rehearsing for Heart of a Soldier at the San Francisco Opera. You can tell the scene is Northern Rhodesia in 1962, because that is where the British military first started offering complimentary personal training packages to their troops.
La Cieca hears that parterre fave David Daniels will get all eponymous and stuff for a world premiere opera entitled Oscar, based on the life of Oscar Wilde, for Santa Fe Opera in 2013, with Opera Company of Philadelphia to follow. The work is to boast music by Theodore Morrison and a libretto and stage…
“What I find bizarre is the insistence that no one—not the school, not Opera North, not the local education authority—is being homophobic. Instead, we have the strange position that, because the children are of primary-school age, these lines are too difficult and confusing for them.” The lines in question are “Of course I’m queer/That’s why…
You only thought the “Brokeback” Eugene Onegin was the gayest possible take on the Tchaikovsky “lyric scenes.” Now, along comes La Cieca’s fave director Stefan Herheim‘s extravagant, transgressive, high-camp symbolist (and about a dozen other adjectives) approach to the work, “gay” in the very best sense of gay sensibility. Video after the jump!
The ever-alert PR people at the English National Opera (why can’t we have a company like this?) have assembled a “what if?” video to promote Nico Muhly‘s impending Two Boys, and thrown in an admirably scruffy “reality” actor to boot.
The annual Duke of York’s Picturehouse Eurovision Party, which is apparently a gay institution in Brighton, is pre-empted this year because of demand for tickets for the Met’s HD of Die Walküre. [BBC News] (Voigt photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
“What prevents Company from being the greatest musical ever written (which, given the talents going into it, it certainly could have been) is that there is something central to the work that is false, a cheat.” Our Own JJ (not pictured) reveals his theater queen side in Capital New York.
“Greek night at opera canceled due to conflict” [Indiana Daily Student]
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.
