Less is Moor
It’s official: in the Met’s new production of Otello, Aleksandrs Antonenko “will not use blackface makeup… breaking with a performance tradition of more than a century.”
Metropolitan Opera
The mothership and mecca of opera in America—and home base for Parterre Box.
Hunch confirmed
George Gagnidze and Zeljko Lucic will share the title role of Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Met this fall, replacing Simon Keenlyside…
21st century blues
Your doyenne peers into the future, or, to be more accurate, into the Future Met Wiki, to reveal the latest rumors on casting and repertoire.
Lede buried
They were there, opera insiders said, because Chelsea Clinton is a friend of the tenor Vittorio Grigolo, who was playing the Chevalier, Manon’s true love.”
Sometimes just pretzels and beer
Our Own JJ crunches the numbers at the Met and LoftOpera in the New York Observer.
Out of the frying pan
Met press office: Salvatore Cordella will sing Edgardo in this evening’s performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, replacing Joseph Calleja, who is ill.
Keep watching the skies!
As you may have heard, cher public, Joseph Calleja canceled last night’s Lucia performance at the Met after the first act. So… well, see the headline above.
Oh, de’ verdi anni miei
“The Met’s revival of Verdi’s Ernani Friday night was every inch a tragic opera, though without being grand in any way. Its grisliest calamity was not the one the composer devised but rather one the production’s star, Plácido Domingo, brought on himself.”
Tale of the tape
As the Deutsche Grammophon producer for the 1972 Metropolitan Opera Carmen recording, I was delighted to read Patrick Mack’s review of its recent re-release on a surround-sound/stereo CD set.
All futures great and small
The Metropolitan Opera yesterday afternoon was an uncommonly cozy place, as the auditorium was packed to the rafters with friends and family members of the nine National Council Audition Finalists.
The kids are not all right
“’They’re young… they’re in love… and they kill people’ goes the tagline for the 1968 film Bonnie and Clyde, but the slogan could apply almost as well to the outlaw pair at the center of the Metropolitan Opera’s white-hot revival of Massenet’s Manon.”
Spring can really hang you up the most
Zeljko Lucic has withdrawn from his spring Met engagements due to illness.
Opera snooze
That much-anticipated and much-feared “exposé” about Peter Gelb and the Met? Almost completely rehash.
Je sens une pure flamme
Our Own JJ‘s take on the Massenet will not appear until next week, but for now you are invited to make do with Zachary Woolfe‘s rave in the New York Times.
“The cold bothered me, anyway”
“It was the chilliest opening night at the Met in years on Monday—barely 15 degrees when the curtain went up on the company premiere of La Donna del Lago.“
Ebben… domani
The Met announces its 2015-2016 season tomorrow at 1:00 PM, cher public, and La Cieca knows you will all be here to discuss and dissect
One for the woad
Ellen Douglas finds herself in Act II of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago in the far from unusual operatic position of having her love claimed by two impassioned tenors in the bel canto version of a macho drag race.
Be my guest!
James Levine turns 72 this year. Even though his health has improved considerably in the past year and he may continue to conduct for a decade or more, it seems inevitable that he will step down as the Met’s Music Director sometime in the next few years to assume the role of Conductor Laureate.
News has a kind of mystery
It’s that time of the year when the Met does its season announcement, cher public.
Singular sensation
“If Mozart had only had the sense to write Don Giovanni in a… single-performer format, last Wednesday’s revival at the Met would have been one for the ages.
Post no double bills
A sharp-eyed parterrian reports a poster of some sort (perhaps protesting Anna Netrebko and Valery Gergiev?) has somehow been affixed to the wall of the Met lobby at balcony level during tonight’s performance of Iolanta/Bluebeard’s Castle.
Love it to death
Mariusz Trelinski will direct Tristan und Isolde for Metropolitan Opera in a production that will premiere there on opening night 2016.
For your eyes only
“Don’t bother with The Loft or The Boy Next Door: the most spine-chilling thriller currently playing isn’t on the screen of your local multiplex but on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.”
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).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
