La Cieca notices that those lovely people over at Berkshire Record Outlet are offering what might fairly be called a plethora of opera performances on DVD, for just $8.99 a pop. Particularly drool-inducing selections include La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein (Regine Crespin), Lakme (Joan Sutherland), Carmen (Denyce Graves, Roberto Alagna), Un ballo in maschera (Carlo Bergonzi,…
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.
Imagine a world where alarm clocks dictate when to go to sleep…. where ugliness is beautiful… where it is a crime to make anything perfect… and where the cheap seats at New York City Opera cost $45.00. Welcome to the Bizarro World, arriving this fall at the New York State Theater. NYCO has jacked up…
La Cieca has sneered quite a bit at Anthony Tommasini lately for his slipshod coverage of the Met’s archives and a really repellent obituary of Piero Cappuccilli. But it’s not like Tony is alone in his bumbling. This morning’s Newsday included a wire-service obit of legendary cabaret diseuse The Incomparable Hildegarde, who departed this world…
This week it seems Tony Tommasini can’t do anything right. First he cooed over Renee Fleming‘s impossibly arch performance at a Mostly Mozart concert. Well, subjectivity and all that; still, you have to wonder where bad taste ends and starfucking begins. Then, in this morning’s paper, ironically in a piece about the Met’s archives, Tony…
Something for the weekend: La Cieca presents Act 3 of Die Walkuere as the latest Unnatural Act. The performance is a classic: Bayreuth 1951, Varnay, Rysanek, Bjoerling, Karajan.
Piero Cappuccilli, considered one of the finest Italian baritones of his generation, lies in an advanced state of putrefaction today. He died July 12, but for reasons best known to Anthony Tommasini of the Times, that passing was not noted until today, i.e., nine days after the fact. Perhaps if Cappuccilli had achieved “international stardom”…
La Cieca hears (from very reliable sources indeed) that one of the first initiatives of the new Peter Gelb regime at the Met will be to build up Angela Gheorghiu into “house diva.” Apparently the new attitude will be “you’re going on, with or without that wig.” Another top-priority item on the Met’s agenda: a…
The second “episode” of Norma is now available for download at Unnatural Acts of Opera. And speaking of Norma, can anyone confirm this story? It’s a regional production of the opera, sometime around the mid to late ’60s. The Adalgisa either learned the role in a big hurry or else was just congenitally not very…
Did you know Unnatural Acts of Opera is the only all-opera podcast in the whole, uh, podosphere? Even better, this podcast features only live opera performances, preferably demented. Our opera this time is both live and demented, with even a soupcon of backstage drama to add an extra frisson. La Cieca presents the first act…
La Cieca has to say she is just plain appalled at the turn of events in the Opera Barga / Motezuma fracas. Not that she’s any particular fan of Vivaldi opera, but the behavior of the officials at the Berlin Sing-Akademie (who claim copyright ownership of this 270-year-old opera) strikes her as unartistic and just…
Music fans of all orientations, gay, straight and bi (oops, the Times says you don’t exist, my mistake), well, anyway, music fans around the world finally have news worth talking about. No, we’re not talking about Alberto Vilar, but you’re getting warm. Which is to say, it’s good news. Sir Elton John and George Michael…
For the first “regular” show of “Unnatural Acts of Opera,” La Cieca presents Shirley Verrett in Act One of Verdi’s Macbeth in a live (and lively!) performance from La Scala, the opening night of the 1975 season. This was surely one of the greatest nights of Verrett’s career, when Kunst and Stimm met in perfect…
The reviews for Apple’s iTunes 4.9 are mixed but the consensus is “thumbs up.” La Cieca downloaded and installed the new version last night; very smooth. The interface with podcasts is something less than lavish, the one part of the application that feels “freeware.” But La Cieca realizes there are a lot of people out…
The decentralization of the music business is progressing so quickly La Cieca can hardly keep up. (Though it’s not like she’s completely in the loop; as you know, she only recently found out that Giulio Ricordi had died!) The very latest (as of this morning) is that Apple has launched a new build of iTunes…
Norman Lebrecht has lost his fucking mind. My second favorite in this rabid rant is how Wieland Wagner (the “competent” stage director) had the middle name “Adolf.” (Wieland was born in 1917, six years before his mother Winifred met the fellow Lebrecht insinuates was his namesake.) The number one brain-fart in the piece is Lebrecht’s…
La Cieca is just asking — why should the Web site of that prominent American baritone suddenly go offline? This artist (recently at the pinnacle of his career) has done musicals before, but this fancy footwork looks like something from Chicago! And which switch-hitting intendant is making noises about quitting his summer job? Is he…
So La Cieca has been thinking about joining the pod people; that is, she wants to try her hand at podcasting. One idea off the top of La Cieca’s well-coiffed head is something called “Daily Dose of Diva,” a mix of some of my favorite opera recordings and a bit of yakking thrown in. But…
La Cieca is as puzzled as everyone else about the mysterious disappearance of the DGG DVD of Don Giovanni (Met telecast with Terfel, Fleming, Levine – you know the one). The disc was released on May 10, then only days later DGG recalled it. Now there’s not a copy to be bought anywhere, and early…
The media frenzy surrounding the arrest of Alberto Vilar continues unabated. I mean, it’s like he’s the Lindsay Lohan of opera. The NY Times this morning does an in-depth on the apprehended altriust, coaxing quotes out of the notoriously media-shy Beverly Sills (“He was not, how shall I say, quiet, about his giving”) and Donald…
“It doesn’t matter who sings what. At some point, someone’s fist is up someone else’s rectum.” No, actually that’s not a memoir of operagoing in New York in the 1970s; rather, it’s Shirley Apthorp‘s review of Calixto Bieito‘s production of Verdi’s Macbeth in Frankfurt. And isn’t it nice to see a story about the Metropolitan…
Met/Kirov/Royal Opera angel Alberto Vilar was arrested last night, charged with stealing $5 million from a client. The Federal complaint states that Vilar used the investor’s money “as a personal piggy bank to pay personal expenses and make charitable contributions, without the knowledge, consent, or authorization of the victim.” According to the story on Bloomberg.com,…
“Something happens on the opera stage when Aprile Millo and Marcello Giordani are on it together. It may not be perfect. It may even be a little awkward at times. But it’s real singing – at best, wonderful singing. And people want it.” That’s Anne Midgette in today’s New York Times, and she’s obviously as…
You could say last night at the Met was a typical Aprile Millo performance, if that expression were not essentially an oxymoron. “Typical” and “Millo” really don’t intersect in this dimension (maybe somewhere on a spiritual plane? But I digress.) Let’s just say that, what happens at a Millo night, happened last night, which is…
The Met’s so-called “Millo Pole” will no doubt tonight be swarming with cognoscenti, or as we like to call them around here, opera queens. Aprile Millo sings her only staged Tosca of the Met’s season, and that’s reason enough to shlep over to Lincoln Center. (Millo had a big personal success in Ballo last month,…
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.
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.