In celebration of the recent Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, the New York Times puts their best man on the case, with exactly the adjective-engorged result you might predict: Out of Opera’s Cradle, Hunky Broadway Babies. “Back then, audiences were willing to lean forward and pay attention.”
“The chief judge of the federal appeals court in California, Alex Kozinski, has contributed to a Web site that featured sexually explicit materials …. [including] a photograph of naked women painted to look like cows. . .” [via NYT] Â
New York City Opera has commissioned American composer Charles Wuorinen to write an opera based on “Brokeback Mountain,” a love story about two U.S. ranch-hands that won three Oscars when it was turned into a movie. The opera house’s spokesman Gerard Mortier said in a statement on Sunday that Wuorinen had accepted an invitation to […]
Those of you who who worry that the New York City Opera gets less than favorable coverage in the New York Times may now cease and desist your fretting. Gérard Mortier hasn’t even come yet, but Tony Tommasini is already licking his lips at the prospect of all that “brilliant, unabashedly provocative” Belgian goodness: As someone who has […]
As everyone knows, practically nobody reads the Saturday edition of the New York Times even during the winter, much less on the first weekend of the summer when everyone who might be interested in giving money to an opera company is on their way to the Hamptons. So it comes as no surprise that it […]
As La Cieca first reported back in March, Jeffrey Vanderveen, recently split from IMG, will now head up Universal Music Classical Artists Management and Productions, a division “meant to provide management services for and produce live events for prominent classical musicians.” IMG has responded by filing filed suit against Vanderveen and other Universal honchos, claiming […]
“Sony Pictures studio unveiled plans Wednesday for a new digital cinema unit to bring filmed presentations of Broadway shows, rock concerts and sports events to specially equipped movie theaters nationwide.” [USA Today] “The Met’s transmissions of eight live performances to movie theaters reached 908,000 people, more than the total number who attended performances at the […]
Readers of this morning’s New York Times were privileged to be present at what might be called “the birth an an idée fixe” — that is, Tony Tommasini‘s new obsession. Oddly enough, this new object of TT’s unremitting fascination isn’t something in pants, or, for that matter, something that just wriggled out of its pants. Let’s […]
La Cieca’s cher public — and music lovers around the world — won’t have Bernard Holland to kick around any more. The veteran classical music reviewer is leaving the New York TImes after 27 years, though to us who read him regularly it has easily seemed twice that. Holland is one of about 85 NYT newsroom […]
According to a review by Vivien Schweitzer in this morning’s NYT, the staid old Metropolitan Opera introduced a rather startling new plot element into their current revival of Entführung aus dem Serail:
In what La Cieca hopes may be a quiet voice of reason, or, failing that, just for the sake of clarity, she would like to quote from the press release announcing the Met’s program for the summer of 2008. “We are trying something new this summer, which we think will be especially appealing to all […]
The accustomed Peter Gelb ballyhoo was not in evidence this morning when the Met very quietly let it be known that the company’s Parks concert series would not take place this summer. According to a rather modest item in today’s New York Times, in lieu of the familiar format of a “tour” of the city’s […]
“A bare-chested prisoner, suspended upside down from a rope tied to his ankles, is pushed back and forth by brutish guards with clubs as if he were a human piñata.”
“Camilla” is presumably “charismatic, vocally robust … uncommonly dashing and cagey” Luca Pisaroni. [NYT]
” . . . he embodied Wozzeck, giving so much that by the end, after Wozzeck murdered Marie in a jealous fit, Mr. Keenlyside had perspired through his shirt.”
So what has so incensed readers of the New York Times that they have fired off a whole page of letters to the editor? Obama’s “bitter” remark? Immigration? DIplomacy with Israel? None of the above, in fact: topic du jour for Monday April 21 is the Met’s new policy on renewals for subscriptions to the […]
Two of the cher public (thanks, Paul and Michael!) have tipped La Cieca to what may be the ne plus ultra of operatic Regie, a new production of Un ballo in maschera in Erfurt. According to an article in the Telegraph, This “different . . . provocative” staging of the Verdi warhorse sets the tale […]
In all the publicity surrounding last week’s memorials to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a far more put-upon martyr has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. Celebrated freedom fighter Franco Zeffirelli is making veiled suggestions (through a “friend”) that, should the Met mothball such “masterpieces” as his 20-year-old Tosca production, supporters of the octogenarian […]
La Cieca wants to reassure her cher public that she has neither fallen off the face of the earth nor succumbed to that mysterious illness that’s killing all the bloggers. The last few days have been something of a slow news period for opera gossip and your doyenne has taken advantage of that fact by […]
Definitive barihunk Nathan Gunn (center) will play Lancelot in a semistaged concert of Lerner and Loewe’s musical Camelot at Avery Fisher Hall May 7-10. Additional hunkiness will be provided by Gabriel Byrne (Arthur) and Marc Kudisch (Sir Lionel) and the diva quotient may be filled by Marin Mazzie as Guenevere. The New York Philharmonic presentation […]
A loyal member of the cher public noticed this howler by Need You Ask in the online NYT earlier today: Unfortunately for La Cieca (and, well, yes, for anyone else with journalistic standards — so sue me!) the Times has already managed to do one of their “Ministry of Truth” numbers on the offending paragraph […]
“Marcello Giordani, in the title role, sounded at one moment like an important tenor and at others like an imperfect work in progress.” Bernard Holland, March 19, 2008. “The young tenor Brian Hymel, a very acceptable work in progress, sang ‘La donna è mobile” from Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’.” Bernard Holland, March 8, 2008
La Cieca hears that the Met is skedding tenor (erstwhile baritone) Gary Lehman for a Tristan staging rehearsal tomorrow. As La Cieca understands it, Lehman is a formal cover for the role (after John Mac Master) and so . . . well, just about anything may happen on Friday night. And thereafter, actually.
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
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