The author, now viewed as an early feminist, based the plot on her own difficult experience with postpartum depression, which was then diagnosed as a nervous disorder curable only by a long period of bed rest, over-feeding and withdrawal from the world of family and friends. The character in the opera ends up going mad…
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.
… well, not tonight, actually, but on Saturday afternoon, when La Cieca once more will convene the faithful for a live chat on the topic of the Met broadcast of Manon Lescaut. Now, honestly cher public, how was La Cieca to resist? You’ve already read Our Own JJ‘s reaction to the performances of Karita Mattila…
“Even though Puccini’s first successful opera is called Manon Lescaut, the eponymous party girl is not the real protagonist of the work. By far a more interesting character — and the recipient of Puccini’s most grateful music — is her lover Des Grieux.” Our Own JJ reviews the Met’s revival of Manon Lescaut in the current…
As La Cieca scours the web in search of new candidates for the Regiequiz, she sometimes is simply stopped in her tracks by a Konzept so new, so unusual and so innovative that your doyenne cannot help but shift her paradigm. Such a production is this Aida in (of all conservative places) Vienna.
La Cieca urges you in the cher public to register on parterre.com. After the simple registration process, you should remain logged in to the site indefinitely, or anyway until you deliberately log out (see the “meta” section of the menu bar to the left). The advantage of registering is that you will not need to key…
La Cieca, being a very girly sort of girl, is not so good at math, so she is asking you, cher public, to help her with this diffy word problem. So, pick up your Number 2 pencils, and begin. According to the New York Times, when you add all these things together: ….burly presence, effortless power and…
As quite a few of the cher public surmised, the most recent Regiequiz depicted a production of Don Giovanni (at the Landestheater Linz, to be precise) featuring barihunk Martin Achrainer as the eponymous erotomaniac: Herr Achrainer has become something of a blogger’s darling of late, featured at Barihunks as well as Our Own site in…
La Cieca is once more available for dancing in the streets and shouting from the housetops for the (admittedly off-topic) reason that the Technicolor musical campfest Torch Song has made its long-awaited debut on DVD. Only in 1953 — with the Red Scare, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the growing threat from televsion bewildering studio exectives —…
Now, here’s a sentence La Cieca thought she’d never hear herself saying: “Oh, for the good old days when Jane Eaglen sang all the big Wagner parts at the Met!” Ho-jo-to-no!
Even among a galaxy of stars, Miss Leontyne Price sheds (how shall I put it?) a special radiance. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://youtube.com/v/-PDa4y4YxVM” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Miss Price was born on February 10, 1927 and the awards ceremony took place on January 26, 2008. La Cieca leaves the math as an exercise for the reader.
La Cieca’s spy L’Inconnu in the City of Brotherly Love (which, given the circumstances, she supposes she should specify is Philadelphia) whispers: La Cieca favorite Stephen Costello is one of the only worthwhile reasons to catch David DiChiera‘s new opera Cyrano premiering tomorrow night at the Opera Company of Philadelphia. The men truly led the…
La Cieca is indebted to those Wellsungs for this idea:Â what’s your birth opera? Or, in other words, which opera (and cast, if applicable) was the Met performing on the day you were born? (You get this information, of course, from the Met Archives Database.) Unfortunately, La Cieca, being a Leo, was born outside the regular…
In the second act of Carmen, the eponymous gypsy says “Holà !.. Lillas Pastia, holà !.. nous mangerons tout… tu me régales… holà ! holà …. Tiens, attrape… et apporte-nous des fruits confits; apporte-nous des bonbons, apporte-nous des oranges, apporte-nous du Manzanilla… apporte-nous de tout ce que tu as, de tout, de tout…” Well, that line is cut…
Which star of a recent new Met production showed up at an industry party on Thursday night with her new girlfriend in tow? It seems the diva is extending her sojourn in Manhattan to spend more time with this new (and very young) flame she met in the restroom of a downtown lesbian bar.
La Cieca’s observant spy Joe Conda infiltrated the January 29 interview of Anja Silja and Eva Wagner-Pasquier, reporting that sadly the event was something of a non-starter. He blamed interlocutrix Nimet Habachy, who mostly lobbed “generic” softball questions. La Silja did have a few well-reasoned observations about role preparation and her distaste for the concept…
Cher public, La Cieca acted with her usual impetuosity last night and migrated the blog to WordPress. For the last couple of months, Blogger has been slower and slower to post to FTP, and their Help Desk might better be called “Desk.” The frustration really peaked late yesterday afternoon when La Cieca got the “fishbone”…
Or, to put it another way, could this soprano be what the Met needs for Roberto Devereux? While you ponder the future, you can enjoy the past: the final act of Verdi’s Macbeth is now on Unnatural Acts of Opera.
Well, it had to happen sooner or later, and so it did happen, sometime between last night and tonight. La Cieca has decided she’s taking Roberto Alagna‘s side in The Scandale. Yes, yes, La Cieca hears your gasps and snorts of disbelief and contempt, but you know, cher public, La Cieca is, deep in her…
More Met news, this time something certain and soon. The Metropolitan Opera will hold its first ever “Open House” on Friday, September 22. The all-day event will include: the final dress rehearsal of the new Anthony Minghella/James Levine production of Madama Butterfly starring Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Marcello Giordani, Dwayne Croft and Maria Zifchak a panel discussion…
Here are the results of La Cieca’s informal and utterly unscientific poll of her readers, asking “Who should replace Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the Met’s production of Orfeo?” As you can see, a large plurality favored Ewa Podles, with David Daniels and Susan Graham also receiving numerous votes.
Well, who says that the summer is a slow news season for opera? The top story this week is that the Royal Opera Covent Garden is living up to it name (the royal part I mean) by casting Deborah Voigt as Ariadne for their 2007-08 season. And bravi to La Voigt herself and her publicity…
Due to server snafu, La Cieca has had to repost the “Che Faremo” poll. Please feel free to vote again (or for the first time!) Who should replace Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the Met’s production of Orfeo? Alice Coote David Daniels Susan Graham Bejun Mehta Ewa Podles Dolora Zajick Nessuno — cancel the production!
The fascinating and unconventional artist Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died yesterday at her home in Santa Fe. We in New York heard her only infrequently in opera, most recently in Serse and La clemenza di Tito at the NYCO and Les Troyens at the Met. She was scheduled to sing Orfeo in a new production of…
Well, La Cieca has thought herself a mistress of the sizzling putdown, but she has been severely dethroned by one Andrew Clark of the Financial Times. So, how dull and conservative is Jonathan Kent‘s new staging of Tosca at the Royal Opera? “Kent’s production is the sort you expect at the Metropolitan Opera.” Oh, no…
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.
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.