In the wake of all the discussion of the Met’s new production of La traviata, a major setback to live opera on all fronts, I began to wonder if there truly is a future for opera other than as an overpriced museum piece for an aging audience who likes their sets lavish, their productions non-challenging, and their singers telegenic. Read more »
There was a moment during Natalie Dessay’s performance of Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” when the singer summoned the ghost of her former self. It was on the word Kuß!: her voice opened majestically, blooming with a youthful vibrancy. It brought back memories of her great successes on the operatic stage—Ophelia, Lucia, Zerbinetta—the performances that made her an international star. Read more »
“Ms. Fleming, 58, and Ms. Dessay, 52, faced the same problem over the past decade or so.” [New York Times]
New York City Opera presents the world premiere of Iain Bell and Mark Campbell’s Stonewall. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the uprising, Stonewall is a moving and explosive new American opera that captures the rage, grit, humor and, finally, hope of the LGBTQ+ community’s uprising in a Greenwich Village dance club on one hot night in June 1969. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, June 21-28. Read more »
Here the first video of Natalie Dessay in Sondheim’s Passion at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Read more »
La Cieca hears that the Théâtre du Châtelet will continue its series of Stephen Sondheim productions with Passion, set to star Natalie Dessay (as Fosca, bien sûr!)
Almost exactly twenty years after her auspicious Metropolitan Opera debut as the Fiakermilli in Arabella and a year following what she has claims was her final appearance on the operatic stage, Natalie Dessay returned Sunday afternoon to Lincoln Center—to sing opera.
Walking away from Theatre Châtelet this afternoon, I felt as though my relationship with France and its notoriously perplexing people and culture had at long last reached some degree of depth.
Cher Public