Writers’ block
The last place you’d expect to find opera at all, let alone good, exciting opera, is in still-scrappy Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Metropolitan Opera
The mothership and mecca of opera in America—and home base for Parterre Box.
Come aboard, we’re expecting you
“The Metropolitan Opera Guild invites you to join Deborah Voigt on a musical journey to the islands and shores of Croatia and Montenegro.”
Metropolitan Opera 2014-2015
Here you are, cher public, details of the Met’s (to be perfectly frank) not particularly spectacular mid-decade season.
It’s today!
La Cieca’s spy informs her that the Met will announce its 2014-2015 “Wednesday evening.” Watch parterre.com starting at 4:00 pm tomorrow for up-to-the-minute coverage.
Slavas of New York
Even when the opera performed is a masterpiece, a truly superb opera performance is exceedingly rare.
“Oh how I sympathize with King Canute!”
Norman Lebrecht, who is now actively trying (and failing) to destroy classical music—and why not: look how cruelly the industry has treated him!—has published a “review” from a “critic” who walked out of a three-act opera after the first act.
Food of the gods
Treat yourself to the beauty and pageantry that is grand opera at the Metropolitan Opera.
No one will be seated during the controversial “Rolling on Molly” sequence
First video snippets of the new Prince Igor are now live on the Met’s website.
Labor days
AGMA’s Alan Gordon warns his membership of a possible lockout by the Met if contract negotiations break down this summer.
Happy February 1!
To celebrate the birthday of Renata Tebaldi, our friends at Opera Depot are offering a free download of live performances by this great diva.
Catch of another day
“A charming musical performance welded to a dramatic production so old and stale that, like fish left out too long, it’s starting to smell.”
Don’t bother with a rewrite
La Cieca’s operative deep in the bowels of the Josie Robertson Plaza has just informed her that the announcement of the Met’s 2014-2015 season is now less than two weeks away.
Bottom line
“Revenue for performances in the [Metropolitan] opera house ended up at 69% of total potential box office revenue in the 2012?2013 season (79% of seats were purchased, including discounts).”
Destination moon
The legend of the mermaid is ancient, and recently scientists have theorized that these legends might have arisen when humans encountered marine mammals such as whales, seals, or sea lions.
B. F. deal
Tenors Bryan Hymel (pictured) and Joseph Calleja redeem otherwise routine Puccini revivals at the Met, says Our Own JJ in the New York Observer.
Local man
After four years of delegating union talks to his predecessor, Joseph Volpe, Met honcho Peter Gelb will now lead negotiations himself.
Turd polished
The lovably garrulous jailer Frosch, as portrayed by Broadway’s Danny Burstein in the Met’s production of Die Fledermaus, has revised his opinion of the art of opera, at least temporarily.
The wrong note drag
“…the Met’s brand new production of Die Fledermaus, which premiered on New Year’s Eve, is overproduced, undersung and interminable, less a holiday entertainment than a checklist of opera-making skills the company can’t seem to master.”
“Say, what’s in this drink?”
Given the no-show of Anna Netrebko at the final dress rehearsal of L’elisir d’amore, the recent rift in the Netrebko-Schrott household and this insane weather, La Cieca thinks it’s time for the hive mind to decide who’s singing Adina at the Met on Thursday night.
Bat mitzvah?
“They have a menorah and a Christmas tree,” he said, alluding to their assimilated status.
Come to the unstable
How, then, to explain the perplexing performance last Friday night of Falstaff, Mr. Levine’s first new production since his return?
He is big
Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, is exuberantly inventive, bubbling and roiling with ideas the 79-year-old composer was too impatient to develop.
Chat roulette
It’s the opening of the Met’s Saturday afternoon broadcast season, cher public, and the first opera in the series is Rigoletto.
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!
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).
