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So the gossip La Cieca has been picking up is that at some point there were plans at the Met to open the 2012-13 season with Eugene Onegin featuring Mariusz Kwiecien, Anna Netrebko and Matthew Polenzani. The soprano and baritone were also booked to open the 2013-2014 season with new production of La bohème. Then […]
As we all already know (those of us addicted to Brad Wilber‘s Met Futures, and who among us is not?) the Metropolitan Opera already has plans to produce two operas of Donizetti’s so-called “Tudor Trilogy.” Anna Bolena opens the 2011-2012 season featuring Anna Netrebko (left) and Maria Stuarda follows on the following season starring Joyce […]
A loyal member of the cher public writes: “Very nice performance of Fanciulla last evening. Although I still love Debbie, and am quite willing to see her in anything she does, I think this was the best of the three Fanciullas I’ve seen so far.”
This just in from the Met’s press office: “Matthew Polenzani will sing the role of Alfredo in La Traviata for all performances this season. For the January 19, 22, 26 and 29 performances, Polenzani replaces Francesco Meli, who has withdrawn due to illness.”
UPDATE: Thanks to the generosity of a member of the cher public who wishes to remain anonymous, a ticket has been obtained for the parterre reviewer!
“The decades-overdue debut of Sir Simon Rattle at the Met Friday night demonstrated brilliantly just what we’ve been missing: His conducting of Pelléas et Mélisande is the musical pinnacle of the season.” [New York Post]
It’s a sad story, really. Debussy and Maeterlinck had what the kids would call Major Drama over who was to sing Melisande (Mary Garden vs. the person you’ve never heard of) and so Maeterlinck didn’t see Pelleas until years after Debussy had died, so he never got to be like “word!” or, I suppose, “mot!”
La Cieca has just heard that Ferruccio Furlanetto has canceled this afternoon’s performance of Don Carlo at the Met. Giorgio Giuseppini will sing Filippo.
At long last, the Met Saturday afternoon broadcasts begin again today with Don Carlo at 12:30 PM. What better way to spend a lazy winter afternoon than with Margaret, Ira, and a chat in La Casa della Cieca?
Our Own JJ (pictured) reveals what makes him cry. [Musical America]
A faithful reader has just informed La Cieca that, two weeks ago at the Met, during an intermission of La bohème, he saw Henry Kissinger, “flanked by two bodyguards twice his height and twelve times his weight.” Which led this reader to pose to you, cher public, the following trivia question: “What makes Henry Kissinger […]
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking may be the next “documentary” character to take operatic life on the stage of the Met. According to Le Devoir, director Robert Lepage, composer Osvaldo Golijov and librettist Alberto Manguel are rumored to be collaborating on an opera for the Met’s 2015-16 season based on Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
The answers of millions of supplicants worldwide (and thousands of Met-goers citywide) have been answered. “[Peter Gelb] said there were no plans to replace Mr. Zeffirelli’s productions of La Bohème and Turandot. [New York Times]
La Cieca was just forwarded the following ominous announcement: “The George London Foundation Recital event that was to feature tenor Marcello Giordani and soprano Susanna Phillips at The Morgan Library & Museum on Sunday, December 12, 2010, at 4:30 PM, has been canceled. Mr. Giordani has been hospitalized with a severe case of sciatica and […]
La Cieca (not pictured) hopes to hear reactions from the cher public who attended this afternoon’s HD of Don Carlo, a preview of which follows the jump.
“The main culprit here is director Giancarlo Del Monaco (and by extension, his enablers Plácido Domingo, Joseph Volpe and Mrs. Donald Harrington), since, like the other four Del Monaco stagings at the Met in the early 1990s, this Fanciulla concentrates on massive naturalistic sets and superficial coups de theater at the expense of subtle characterization […]
Our Own JJ finds the Met’s revival of Fanciulla “…a performance more dutiful than golden.” [New York Post]
What better omen for the an opening night of La fanciulla del West than the first snow of the season here in New York City?
“Sombre splendor there is frequently not.” Zachary Woolfe mulls Don Carlo. [New York Observer]
The interpretation of Carmen by Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca has been much debated, many finding her cold and remote, others admiring her subtly smoldering quality. A new Deutsche Grammophon DVD documenting the Met’s January 16, 2010 performances offers us an opportunity to examine the gypsy in close-up. This is certainly not the lusty, passionate, mercurial Carmen […]
Don Carlo is truly a grand opera, Verdi’s biggest, no matter if it’s the four or five act version. It is a bitch.
The truth, at last: “By Manuela Hoelterhoff and Zinta Lundborg” [Bloomberg]
After a rather long afternoon at the Met, a member of the cher public writes: “The Don Carlo final dress was worth catching.” Our spy has more to say after the jump.
Don Pasquale is one of those operas that make listeners feel very happy and gay, who, after seeing it, live happily ever after and gayer than before. It’s about a whore who needs to get laid, with an eye on the young (once and still bottom) hunk versus the older (once top, yes you guessed […]
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!
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).
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