It’s Janice Baird as Isolde tonight, opposite (still) Ben Heppner. This is getting to be like a freaking mathematical exercise.
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.
It looks like Gary Lehman will finally get a chance to use the full extent of his acting abilities when (inevitably) he takes over the final two performances of Tristan und Isolde next week. In honor of Gary’s return to the cast, the Met is splurging on an actual rehearsal for the maverick renegade heldentenor…
UPDATED at 5:10 PM: La Cieca hears confirms that soprano Angela Meade will make her Metropolitan Opera debut tomorrow night as Elvira in Ernani, replacing Sondra Radvanovksy, who is ill.
This last-minute jump-in moves forward Robert Dean Smith‘s Met debut by two seasons. His official bow will be in a revival of Die Frau ohne Schatten in December 2009.
The most official-looking word La Cieca can find on Saturday afternoon’s Tristan HD adventure is here — and so, it seems, she was half right: Robert Dean Smith will sing the one performance, but only the one. Now, this was just an instinct before the online evidence was presented to her, but your doyenne was…
Though La Cieca must say she can’t quite figure out whether the critic liked Gary Lehman‘s performance or not… “. . . Lehman has navigated quite well to date through persistently volatile and challenging financial markets, the sharp market wide decline in valuations across numerous asset classes, tight global liquidity conditions, and the strong headwinds…
Our Own JJ was at the Met last night (and part of this morning) to review Tristan und Isolde for Gay City News. As such he witnessed the rather astonishing series of events that Atomic Wings told you about earlier. La Cieca cannot of course ask JJ to comment on the specifics of the performance…
As your doyenne predicted yesterday, tenor Gary Lehman will sing tomorrow night’s Met performance of Tristan und Isolde, making his company and role debuts! La Cieca hears from an authoritative source that Lehman will also Robert Dean Smith will be released from concerts in Milan and Luxembourg so he can sing the role opposite Deborah…
parterre mascot Izzy Anderson returns with yet another bash at “La donna e mobile.” Video impresario Wenarto obviously is working his connections like mad since he has managed to film this scene on the Act 2 set from the Met’s Tristan.
La Cieca hears that the Met is skedding tenor (erstwhile baritone) Gary Lehman for a Tristan staging rehearsal tomorrow. As La Cieca understands it, Lehman is a formal cover for the role (after John Mac Master) and so . . . well, just about anything may happen on Friday night. And thereafter, actually.
La Cieca did a bit of nosing around about the abrupt departure of Jeffrey Vanderveen from IMG, and this is how the story is shaping up. Vanderveen’s upcoming gig is the creation of a new division at Universal Music Group devoted to the production and promotion of Tibor Rudas style arena concerts for Universal Classics’ recording artists.…
La Cieca has just exited the season preview for the Met’s 08-09 season (no, she was not thrown out, she left of her own volition) and here’s what’s up.
Cher public, the Met is expected to unveil the specifics of their 2008-2009 season later today. While we’re waiting for all the luscious and/or gory details, La Cieca thought it might be fun to do a quick recap of the season as is is predicted on Brad Wilber‘s MetManiac site. Brad (who historically is spot-on…
“Obama, tall and handsome and blessed with a weighty baritone…” Newsweek Salon, always on the lookout for a story with a hook, posits that “there is something in the very essence of Obama’s voice — its tone, its timbre, its resonance” that inspires trust.
Deborah Voigt has officially “postponed” her role debut (“ihr Rollendebüt zu verschieben”) as Brünnhilde in Siegfried, originally scheduled for April of this year at the Vienna State Opera. Serving as Aufspringerin Einspringerin will be Nina Stemme. Frau Voigt returns to Vienna in November 2008 as Salome and joins the company on their Japangastspiel for Fidelio.
La Cieca has just heard that Nancy Fabiola Herrera will sing the title role of Carmen tonight at the Met, replacing the ailing Olga Borodina.
Here’s an amusing soupcon from the Bay Area Reporter (where the late lamented Tiger Hashimoto once held sway). In his “Out There” column, Roberto Friedman rips the lid off a mini-scandal at the GayVN Awards. Apparently the nominating committee for this group honoring excellence in the gay porn industry were not listening with their “soul…
La Cieca urges you in the cher public to register on parterre.com. After the simple registration process, you should remain logged in to the site indefinitely, or anyway until you deliberately log out (see the “meta” section of the menu bar to the left). The advantage of registering is that you will not need to key…
A new page via WordPress for Unnatural Acts of Opera, as well as archive pages you can reach through the sidebar menu (look to your left, darling!)
The entirety of the “old” parterre.com (including over 30,000 comments from you, cher public!) is preserved at the parterre box archive site.
La Cieca’s spy L’Inconnu in the City of Brotherly Love (which, given the circumstances, she supposes she should specify is Philadelphia) whispers: La Cieca favorite Stephen Costello is one of the only worthwhile reasons to catch David DiChiera‘s new opera Cyrano premiering tomorrow night at the Opera Company of Philadelphia. The men truly led the…
Officially, Anna Netrebko is expecting her baby “this autumn,” and La Cieca of course extends her and Erwin Schrott all the best wishes. However, let’s take a peek at a few recent photos of Netrebko… [Traviata at Covent Garden, early January] [Arriving at the Opernball in Vienna, February 1] [On set of Boheme film, around…
La Cieca was just recalling that soon after she arrived in New York back in 19-mumble-mumble, she screwed up her courage to audition for that most august of impresarios, Ira Siff of La Gran Scena Opera. Back in those days your doyenne thought she had what it took to be a great prima donna (including…
La Cieca is indebted to those Wellsungs for this idea:Â what’s your birth opera? Or, in other words, which opera (and cast, if applicable) was the Met performing on the day you were born? (You get this information, of course, from the Met Archives Database.) Unfortunately, La Cieca, being a Leo, was born outside the regular…
