This just in from the Met press office: “William Shimell will sing the role of Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte for all performances this season, replacing Wolfgang Holzmair who is suffering from a sinus infection.” Mr. Holzmair’s sinus infection is apparently scheduled to linger through December 2.
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.
La Cieca is delighted to note that old, old, old friend Brad Wilber (pictured) has relocated to his own niche of the internet. His Met Futures Page (the Necronomicon of opera queenery) may now be found, with the most recent and delicious updates, at bradwilber.com/metfuture.
“After a sketchy start to the season, the Met hit its stride on Friday with a revival of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale that’s as crisp as autumn in New York.” [New York Post] (Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
“At some point, Met officialdom will have to recognize the continuing failures of the current arrangement, under which the titular artistic director of the company, James Levine, makes sure that he gets the singers he wants for his own performances and seems content to leave Mr. Friend to improvise the remainder of the season.” How…
“So, how is this new Pavarotti?” or, “This young tenor, what’s his name, I saw him on the morning show, is he any good?” When people who have never set foot inside an opera house—and know Maria Callas chiefly as the woman Aristotle Onassis dumped for Jacqueline Kennedy—start asking me such questions, then I…
“At the close of Boris Godunov, a leaderless Russia churns in chaos. Happily, the Met’s new production of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece — despite a last-minute turnover on the production team — ended triumphantly.” [New York Post]
At the risk of “pulling a Kathy Lee,” here’s a preliminary to tonight’s Met performance of Les Contes d’Hoffmann dedicated to Dame Joan Sutherland.
Even as La Cieca tippy-taps these words, the 30-hour Boston–New York–Boston marathon has begun for the maestro about whom the following was written less than two weeks ago: Still, the state of Mr. Levine’s health and music making were major concerns going into this evening. When he took his bow during the curtain calls he…
“In the Met’s Tales of Hoffmann, Giuseppe Filianoti plays a poet defeated by life. In reality, the 36-year-old singer’s brush with tragedy had a far happier ending.” The tenor talks to Our Own JJ in the New York Post.
Stephen Wadsworth‘s vision of Boris Godunov will be more limited than Peter Stein‘s—at least so far as timing goes. Though the original director’s version would not have run anything near as long as his 12 hour Devils on Governor’s Island last summer, Wadsworth found a way to make the production both lighter in weight and…
The fact: the rainbow bridge worked tonight in Rheingold at the Met, and the effect was “spectacular.” (All right, that last part was an opinion. But, moving on.) The rumor: “everyone” at the Met knew “well in advance” that the rainbow bridge would not be attempted at Monday night’s opening performance.
Is it really true—the rumor La Cieca just now invented out of whole cloth—that René Pape will play Boris Godunov as an eccentric Chanel couturier? Cher public, you’ll have the chance to find out even before opening night of the Met’s new production of the Mussorgsky epic, since the company is making available making 2,000…
“Fricka, queen of the gods, modeled one of Mamie Eisenhower’s old cocktail dresses; trickster god Loge rocked a Gary Glitter jumpsuit, and the thieving dwarf Alberich sported MC Hammer pants.” Our Own JJ breaks it down. [New York Post]
Crossing the Plaza and seeing two thousand chairs gleaming in the gloaming with rain slick and thoughts of the evening that might have been for many. Past the ticket takers and the buzz of voices, the gawkers lined up on the stairs to see the celebs, I wend my way through and up and up.…
Our Own JJ is dashing about like a mad crazed thing today. At 4:00 this afternoon, he’s joining Naomi Lewin at WQXR to discuss the Met’s impending season (you can listen here), then dashing over to Lincoln Center to cover the opening night Rheingold for the New York Post. In your doyenne’s understandable absence, hosting…
“Perhaps we’ve seen too many commercials with toffs in penguin suits to accept the fact that operagoers are, in fact, a motley middle-class lot. And the Wagner audience is the motliest of all — emeritus professors sit side by side with Ring-loving schoolteachers, fanatic record collectors, neophyte opera mavens and that woman wearing a Valkyrie…
Tamara Mumford (Flosshilde in Das Rheingold) explains the concept of the Met’s new production of the Ring.
La Cieca’s newest and nicest trickster god Fartnose McGoo (pictured) attended a lecture at the Met tonight introducing the new production of Das Rheingold. After the jump, some of his observations.
Lots of media news today, so let’s not waste any time! La Cieca congratulates Opera News on the occasion of the mag’s 75th anniversary this month, though your doyenne is willing to swear that the mag doesn’t look a day over 60!
Now, don’t you go thinking that Peter Gelb doesn’t listen to his public, which intersects quite steeply, of course, with the cher public. For instance, just the other day La Cieca and a couple of others were lamenting that opera has lost some of it mad silly gay folie lately. Lo and behold, today it…
Our Own JJ emerges from estivation to look forward, Erda-like, toward “the” event of the fall season, plus six more must-sees.
Readers of parterre.com are, La Cieca calculates, about six weeks ahead of the curve, so your doyenne figures you are ready to hear what will likely be a major scoop in the New York Times a few days prior to Halloween. It’s about the technical rehearsals for the Met’s season opener Das Rheingold, and what is…
Finally, the background to the story that rocked the operatic world earlier this summer. Peter Stein withdrew from the Met’s Boris Godunov “because he felt offended by his treatment at the United States Consulate in Berlin when he applied for a work visa and by a lack of sympathy from Peter Gelb, the Met’s general…
La Cieca’s spy tells her that Maestro Levine returned to the Met today for a coaching session with the cast of Das Rheingold.
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.
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.