Congratulations to the Met’s Joe Volpe, who has successfully postponed lame duck status by wangling $25 million — real money, not pledges, and relatively few strings attached — from socialite Mercedes Bass and her husband Sid R. Bass. Mrs. Bass, who looks simply smashing in the photo accompanying the New York Times piece, made tactful…
Rolando Villazon not apparently in his very best form but La Cieca is very impressed with a) his willingness to sing out and take chances even when he is less than 100% and b) his well-supported legato that is the basis of even his most vehement singing. Anna Netrebko found a way to interpret Gilda…
Long before Matthias Goerne got all girly on us, popera megastar Andrea Bocelli (remember him?) dipped his wick into Wagner chick-lit. This is according to our colleague Nick Scholl at trrill.com, who goes on to snark re crossover and trannies. A link to Kirsten Flagstad showing us How It Should Be Done ensues.
Cher public, those of you who have written to La Cieca wondering at the frequency Anthony Tommasini uses the word “strapping” to describe opera singers of the male persuasion — well, wonder no more. According to the New York Times archives, Tony has flogged his favorite modifer no fewer than 44 times in the past…
Rodgers and Hammerstein is as far as Aprile Millo is willing to cross over at Carnegie Hall, and that’s what led to the rift between her and promoter Ron Delsener — and to the cancellation of the October 14 event. La Millo tells her side of the story: NYT.
La Cieca just heard this on opera-l just now, and checked the Ron Delsener Presents web site, which states, yes, “this show has been canceled.” No idea why, but La Cieca will ask around. Update: a source close to the Delsener organization has told La Cieca that the promoter and the artist had “artistic differences,”…
“Tell me, Roberto, does this costume make my manly butt look big?” Speaking of which, has Anthony Tommasini started writing under an assumed name?
“While humor and story telling can warm any occasion, a good scoop spreads through a room like an illicit and irresistible drug, passed along in nods and crooked smiles, in discreet walks out to the balcony, the corridor, the powder room.” La Cieca is delighted to learn that gossip is the new meth, at least…
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…
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…
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”…
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…
… so says soprano/mentor Renata Scotto, in a charming interview in the NY Times about her singing academy in Westchester. And, of course, there’s a lot more wisdom where that came from. Matthew Gurewitsch is the attentive interviewer. Now Playing at the D.M.V.: Renata Scotto.
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…
“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…
In response to a very official-looking email from the Business and Legal Affairs department of the Universal Music Group, La Cieca reluctantly must now reveal that the mp3 she mischievously identified as “a track from Renee Fleming‘s new jazz album” is in fact nothing of the kind. The clip was meant as a travesty of…
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.
