Diva of the moment Sondra Radvanovsky previews yet another great role: Puccini’s Turandot.
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.
Awesome, astounding, Asiatic Anna Netrebko sings Puccini and Puccini/Alfano at the Arena di Verona.
After the jump, a quiz featuring 15 singers performing Senta’s Ballad.
Though none of the three performances of Anna Netrebko’s Traviata at La Scala was broadcast, an in-house in decent sound has surfaced.
Last week Anna Netrebko sang in concert Violetta’s first act aria from La traviata, an opera she will return to her repertoire at La Scala on Thursday of this week.
La Cieca has the whole thing for you to listen to, cher public, as recorded Sunday afternoon.
Cher public, you knew La Cieca would come through for you, didn’t you? So hurry past the jump and give a listen.
Here’s an extended clip of what the recent concert tour by Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov sounded like.
La Cieca guesses we will have to make these quizzes more challenging.
A first hint of what Anna Netrebko‘s latest Verdi role will sound like.
Well done all of you for guessing almost all the correct identities of the mysterious Ortruden.
Long rumored, here it is: Anna Netrebko sings “Suicidio!” from La Gioconda!
I have banged on and on about doing an “Abscheulicher” quiz for years.
Again dipping into the rich archive of live recordings remastered and made available by the late Mike Richter, we find this selection from his early disc “Odd Opera 2.”
Serious opera fan and internet pioneer Mike Richter died earlier this week.
La Cieca is sort of out of words trying to describe what makes a great performance of the role of Norma, as opposed to the conscientious traversal of the notes.
It’s just a teensy bit late for Verdi’s birthday, but La Cieca thinks you’ll enjoy the latest vocal ID challenge, cher public.
The complete recording of Der Ring des Nibelungen conducted by Christian Thielemann at the Bayreuth Festival is now on sale
for only $5.99. And, no, I am not making this up.
Our JJ’s recent reminiscences over at WQXR about the whopping cost of a Ring recording back in the Mad Men era seemed all the more startling to La Cieca when she took a gander at a “new” live Ring offered by our friends at Opera Depot.
Now the deadline has passed for the Immolation Quiz, La Cieca is happy if a bit puzzled to announce that the result is a tie: two of the cher public were able to identify 23 of the 25 voices in the quiz correctly.
… is Anna Netrebko, performing “Vieni, t’affretta” from Verdi’s Macbeth at tonight’s opening gala at the Mariinsky.
The Immolation Quiz now stands tied between two competitors, each of whom has identified correctly 20 of the 25 singers represented.
“Her letter scene was glorious, and her final meeting with Onegin beguiling. Netrebko leaves nothing to be desired vocally and is a consummate artist as well.”
The music is “Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene” and it is up to you (and I do mean you) to identify the 25 singers involved.
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.
