Yes, yes, La Cieca realizes that parterre has gone “All Anna All the Time,” but, hey, she’s opening the Met season in a company premiere, plus we like her. Anyway, La Netrebko is profiled, covered, revealed, reported, what she eats and when and where, whom she knows and where she was and when and where…
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“With the news this month that James Levine had slipped and injured a vertebra while vacationing in Vermont… Fabio Luisi became the company’s music director in all but name.” [New York Times]
By La Cieca
The Man of Steel is in danger again, this time from a new gang of supervillains: Lila and DeWitt Wallace. [NYT]
By La Cieca
What better way to celebrate le 14 juilliet than with a provocative piece on opera by and about two of La Cieca’s favorite revolutionaries, Zachary Woolfe and Gerard Mortier (respectively), followed by cries of “Liberté, égalité [and especially] fraternité!” from that madcap maven of musical mirth, Maestro Wenarto (after the jump.)
By La Cieca
Soprano, stage director and now, apparently, activist Catherine Malfitano has collected more than 120 signatures on a letter “denouncing New York City Opera’s planned move from Lincoln Center and calling into question the company’s stewardship.” Among those signing on: June Anderson, Jane Bunnell, Tito Capobianco, José Carreras, Frank Corsaro, Phyllis Curtin, Justino Díaz, Joyce DiDonato,…
By La Cieca
Julius Rudel writes: “I cannot sit by and watch as the legacy that was built by a company, if not a family, of talented, dedicated people is cast aside.” [NYT]
By La Cieca
At a time when New York’s opera companies are supposed to be going into estivation (I mean, Peter Gelb is in Vietnam, for heaven’s sake!) there’s certainly no lack of breaking news about New York City Opera. Today’s heart-rending roundup, after the jump.
By La Cieca
Now Anthony Tommasini has gone rummaging for the good news (“a place that could set the cultural tone for its neighborhood, much the way the Public Theater defines the life of its East Village environs”) so completely obscured by the dark clouds of recent reports from NYCO. But even a cockeyed optimist like Tommasini has…
By La Cieca
And now Anthony Tommasini has joined the chorus calling for James Levine “to make his next contribution to the company he loves and step aside as music director.” Even the headline of his NYT piece echoes the talk on parterre a fortnight ago.
By La Cieca
You know, there’s the day-to-day stuff, like is Salvatore Licitra going to sing tonight. And then there’s the “coming soon” stuff, like getting the new Walküre up and running. And the “closely watched” stuff, like the Japan tour, with additional concerns outlined in today’s New York Times. And speaking of that article, there’s bullshit like…
By La Cieca
The Met’s general manager indulges in the sincerest form of flattery by opening today’s New York Times response to his critics with a blind item in the style of a certain low-rent gossipmonger. After you figure out the identity of the “star soprano, [who,] thinking she might have been poisoned, withdrew from the cast,” you…
By La Cieca
Opera’s girl next door—if you live on Riverside Drive—Anna Netrebko discusses her many egg recipes and her favorite pajama boutiques in the Sunday Routine column in the New York Times. (Her own John Raitt, in the person of Erwin Schrott, put in a cameo appearance not in pajamas but a tight t-shirt.)
By La Cieca
“A cover article this weekend about choosing the Top 10 classical composers misstates, at one point, the length of time that opera had existed as of 1750, when Bach died. As the article correctly conveys in other references, opera had been around for roughly 150 years then, not ‘a half-century’.” La Cieca is sure the…
By La Cieca
The answers of millions of supplicants worldwide (and thousands of Met-goers citywide) have been answered. “[Peter Gelb] said there were no plans to replace Mr. Zeffirelli’s productions of La Bohème and Turandot. [New York Times]
By La Cieca
“A book about Mr. Lebrecht’s ‘search for Gustav Mahler,’ as he calls his obsession, this is also a book about Mr. Lebrecht, a far less compelling subject.” [NYT]
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“…Don José stabs Carmen in the gripping finale.” [NYT]
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“Thirty years after the action of Tahiti the young son, Junior, is now gay and possibly schizophrenic; his former lover is married to his younger sister, Dede. During his mother’s funeral Junior starts a striptease in front of his father, knocking into the coffin in the process…. This was neither the sound nor the subject…
By La Cieca
“Perhaps we’ve seen too many commercials with toffs in penguin suits to accept the fact that operagoers are, in fact, a motley middle-class lot. And the Wagner audience is the motliest of all — emeritus professors sit side by side with Ring-loving schoolteachers, fanatic record collectors, neophyte opera mavens and that woman wearing a Valkyrie…
By La Cieca
Readers of parterre.com are, La Cieca calculates, about six weeks ahead of the curve, so your doyenne figures you are ready to hear what will likely be a major scoop in the New York Times a few days prior to Halloween. It’s about the technical rehearsals for the Met’s season opener Das Rheingold, and what is…
By La Cieca
A century ago, Mary Garden parlayed an interview with the New York Times on the subject of her bizarre attire into blatant promotion for an upcoming tour date. Miss Garden truly was the Lady Gaga of her day. [The Awl]
By La Cieca
La Cieca’s faithful spies once again have done their jobs well! What you learned here a week and a half ago about refitting to the Met stage to accommodate the ginormous weight of the Lepage Ring set has finally made its way into the New York Times. Also (love him or hate him) you have…
By La Cieca
