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Dashing Donald Collup has expanded into yet another media niche with a series of podcasts featuring audio highlights from his acclaimed Astrid Varnay documentary DVD “Never Before.” Here la Varnay recalls her legendary colleague Zinka Milanov. More Astridiana (along with lots of other goodies from the Collup collection) may be found at the official “Never…
Operachic reports, and further sources confirm, that tenor Giuseppe di Stefano died earlier today after an illness lasting several years. He was 87.
Dear Beau has been working his fingers to the bone editing together yet of his confounding “Casta diva” compilations. For this “easier” quiz, he has selected Normas represented, and La Cieca thought that this time around the competition part of the quiz might be best carried out in the comments section. First comment with all…
La Cieca hears from several authoritative sources that Diana Damrau will sing the autumn revival of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met, replacing the gravid Anna Netrebko.
From the Vienna State Opera in January 1988, the first part of the Rossini opera you, cher public, chose: Il viaggio a Reims. Among the all-star cast in this episode of Unnatural Acts of Opera:
From Franco Corelli: Prince of Tenors: The battle between tenor and conductor reached a climax when Cillario denied Franco his ovation at the end of “E lucevan le stelle.” An infuriated Corelli flipped his overlong thumb to his teeth in disgust and ran offstage. The audience was left stunned, the orchestra still playing the ascending…
The solution to the “D’amor al dolce impero” quiz … Maria Callas Renata Scotto Katia Ricciarrelli Christina Deutekom Adelaide Negri Renee Fleming Jennifer Larmore Christine Weidinger Nelly Miricioiu Maja Tabatadze Cecilia Gasdia Montserrat Caballe
Faust (Gounod) Acts 4 and 5 Since our this podcast completes our series of Faust episodes, La Cieca needs to decide which work should be featured next on “Unnatural Acts of Opera.” Your doyenne has narrowed the selection down to five works of maestro Rossini, and now it’s up to you, cher public, to tell…
UPDATE: We have a winner! Francesco guesses all 12 divas correctly at 2:09 AM today, narrowly defeating Pedro, who achieved another perfect score only three hours later. Congratulations to both gentlemen. The rest of you may continue to play just for fun, and La Cieca will post the solution to the quiz on Friday. The…
On February 9, Eva Marton joined the very select sorority of sopranos who have sung all three leading female roles in Elektra when she made her role debut as Klytämnestra at Liceu in Barcelona. (Come to think of it, there are only two other members of that club, Dame Gwyneth Jones and Leonie Rysanek!) La…
… 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…
To you, cher public, from your doyenne, via Eleanor Steber. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/9UvBwKHsk8U” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
La Cieca muses at some length on the audience’s relationship with the audience, but then Diana Soviero demonstrates the point in only a few seconds of singing in the third act of Faust. (Neil Shicoff and Samuel Ramey aren’t exactly slouching either in this 1986 performance.) Faust (Gounod) Act 3
Another “Return of Villazón” sound clip from Ed Rosen‘s Premiere Opera Podcast, featuring Rolando Villazón and Sophie Koch in this extended scene from Act 3 of Werther. (Performance on January 28 in Vienna.) Werther
but she can be a little mysterious a times. The cher public averaged seven out of 11 answers correct on our Casta Diva Quiz, with a four-way tie-up for first position. (By which, La Cieca should perhaps add, she means that four contestants had exactly 10 correct answers, not that your doyenne resorted to some…
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!
As part of the “new look” of parterre.com, La Cieca is going to try inserting a player for each new episode of Unnatural Acts of Opera. And this Act is perhaps a little more Unnatural than most, since it’s the beginning of a multipart tribute to parterre box icon Diana Soviero. Faust (Gounod) Acts 1…
La Cieca was just recalling that soon after she arrived in New York back in 19-mumble-mumble, she screwed up her courage to audition for that most august of impresarios, Ira Siff of La Gran Scena Opera. Back in those days your doyenne thought she had what it took to be a great prima donna (including…
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.
This is what makes conductors wake up screaming. From a performance of Madama Butterfly, Philadelphia, February 1967, with Montserrat Caballe in the title role, and Richard Karp doing what he can to keep things together in the pit. The trainwreck. (La Cieca likes to think of this excerpt as the “Berio Completion” of Butterfly.)
La Cieca has found a few fragments from last night’s performance of Tosca at the ROH — only about 15 minutes of music, but enough, perhaps, to give a hint of the suitability of Angela Gheorghiu for the title role. La Cieca’s take (based on an in-house mike, remember!) is that the Roman diva is…
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