So, who can tell La Cieca what the 2011-12 Metropolitan Opera season has in common with the 2007 Yankees?
STEMdiva status
Ahead of a special boozy, bawdy Valentine’s Day concert, artistic director of Opera Lafayette Patrick Quigley speaks with soprano Maya Kherani about her journey from MIT to rising American Baroque star.
Though Brad Wilber‘s lamented site is no more, opera gossip refuses to die. For example, La Cieca has just heard that for an upcoming opening night at the Metropolitan Opera a beloved and (that word again!) charismatic tenor will return to the house after a six season absence. So now you know more or less …
With their quick rise to fame, the cast of MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” has cashed in on a number of endorsement deals, including weight loss supplements, alcohol and bronzer. But here’s a first. Manhattan culture retailer The Metropolitan Opera is offering to pay Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino not to attend its performances.
Revealed: James Levine has had two back surgeries since the spring, but is described (by Tom Levine) as “very, very positive and very, very optimistic.” [NYT]
The controversy over the demise of Brad Wilber‘s Met Futures site goes mainstream, thanks to (who else?) Zachary Woolfe.
La Cieca just stumbled across this casting call for “puppeteers.”
After 15 years of astoundingly accurate forecasts of future Met seasons, the invaluable resource by Brad Wilber has been, apparently, permanently expunged from the internet. Those of you who, like La Cieca, will cherish the last bits of wisdom from this site may want to download and save this PDF of the most recent cached…
La Cieca has just heard that Salvatore Licitra is out of all performances of the Met’s 2012 revival of Ernani. The role of Verdi’s bandit will be shared between Marcello Giordani and Roberto DeBiasio.
La Cieca’s lovely and talented colleague Olivia Giovetti takes on the Met’s gift shop in the latest installment of her WQX-Aria blog. La Cieca herself is of at the very least two minds about the changes to the gift shop, but she’ll invite you, the cher public, to chew on this issue before starts gnawing…
The Metropolitan Opera expects to achieve a balanced budget in 2011, the first for the company since 2004. In other good news, contributions and grants were up about 21% between 2009 and 2010; program service revenue rose about 6% in the same period. Maestro James Levine took a 5% pay cut, sending his 2010 compensation…
You perhaps will not be completely flabbergasted that La Cieca has a spy following the Met’s Japan tour (pictured). The reports thus far (I mean, once the ragtag band of misfits finally landed in the Land of the Rising Sun) are not particularly scandalous, but, please give our operative time!
Yes, we know, earthquakes, radiation, diva cancellations and all that. But it does still seem a bit strange to La Cieca that the “new” Met, where Peter Gelb so vocally trumpets the vital importance of new productions, should send the shabby 30-year-old John Dexter production of Don Carlo (above) on tour to Japan the very…
Five decades before the Met turned to computer-assisted planks to help tell the story of Wagner’s Ring cycle, the company stirred controversy and comment with another staging of the tetralogy. General Manager Rudolf Bing imported a stark, abstract production from the Salzburg Festival in order to secure the services of Herbert von Karajan, who not…
UPDATE, Tuesday, 7:45 AM: The Met sent out a press release at 1:27 AM New York time today announcing major changes to its roster for the tour of Japan this month. La Cieca has revised the following gossip item (which appeared at 11 PM last night) to reflect the Met’s confirmations.
At long last, the most closely guarded secret of 2011 (besides, you know, everything about what’s going to happen to City Opera) is about to be revealed. Ladies and public, the Second Annual Parterre Cher Public Choice Awards!
The full-figured, frizzy-haired guardian of the status quo once more mounted the chariot to lay down the law earlier this afternoon. No, it wasn’t Stephanie Blythe as Fricka, but rather that other divinity, James Levine, who—La Cieca hears—postponed his well-deserved five-month rest and relaxation regime long enough to call the Met’s musical staff on the…
The cher public’s opinion to the contrary, the Met has cast Ekaterina Gubanova as Giovanna Seymour.
And now Anthony Tommasini has joined the chorus calling for James Levine “to make his next contribution to the company he loves and step aside as music director.” Even the headline of his NYT piece echoes the talk on parterre a fortnight ago.
“The critical reaction to the Robert Lepage’s new production of Die Walküre at the Met leaves this contrarian reviewer in something of a quandary. Not only was pretty much everybody underwhelmed, but there was a consensus about what (they thought) was wrong: the clunkiness of The Machine, the lack of poetry in the latter part of the…
And now, live from Pittsburgh, one of La Cieca’s newest and nicest friends, Web 2.0’s answer to Louella Parsons, the inimitable Rowna Sutin with her video review of the Met’s production of Die Walküre!
You, the cher public have voted, and the results are in. Have we chosen the Met’s next Giovanna Seymour? The results were very close indeed!
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)
La Cieca hears that tenor Yonghoon Lee will sing the title role of Verdi’s Don Carlo during the Met’s tour to Japan, replacing Jonas Kaufmann who will be sick or something. (Photo: Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera)
“If, as rumor has it, conductor Fabio Luisi is poised to succeed the ailing James Levine as music director of the Met, Saturday afternoon’s elegant performance of Ariadne auf Naxos showed he’s the right man for the job.” [New York Post]
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.
A Baroque Valentine’s with Opera Lafayette | Feb | DC & NYC
Celebrate love in all its guises with tender ballads, amorous duets, cheeky verses, and bawdy drinking songs plus food, cocktails and wine.