The Met offers a tradeoff
The catch: Employees would have to agree to a 30 percent cut in pay, half of which would be restored once the Met’s box office returned to pre-pandemic levels.
in the news
Comfort food
“In these few minutes we are given a précis of Leontyne Price as an artist.”
“Why is everything wrong?”
“The shimmery, creamy voice of the ‘undiva,’ as she is known, is ingrained in America’s cultural memory, at both sad and happy moments.”
Mattila, two ways
“I have almost forgotten what it felt like to sit in a velvet seat at the Met, surrounded by people coughing.”
Book of dreams
Christie’s is auctioning nearly 300 scores once owned by Maria Callas…
Take the long way homo
“The worst public in the opera are these obsessed gays. . . . All these rich guys with nothing to do in their life, just following Anna Netrebko or Jonas Kaufmann on all continents. This is not a real audience for me.”
Press conference at the Met
Stay tuned as La Cieca attends this Zoom press conference with Peter Gelb and special guest zoomers.
Revelation
I feel like Jonas Kaufmann is trying to tell us something.
The distance between us
“Dying in the third act is much more intense, as the sickness has the same symptoms as COVID-19, so suffocation, pain, agony, fever—all this must be present and real.”
From a distance
Of 511 epidemiologists polled, about two thirds expect that it will be more than one year from now before they expect to “attend a sporting event, concert or play.”
A change of season
What options are there for the Met and the other performing arts organizations trying to envision restarting performances in the fall?
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).