Barbara Strozzi links two sensuous programs by L’Arpeggiata and Catapult Opera.
Nico Muhly‘s psychological thriller.
The Met is on it with something something woker than woke: a noirish psychodrama of a frigid hysteric who seeks redemption via Freudian analysis!
Nico Muhly has set himself the task of presenting Winston Graham’s elusive heroine Marnie on the operatic stage.
Jarrett Ott is a star. That is the only surprise takeaway from the well-intended snore, Cold Mountain.
La Cieca’s familiar spirits have been turning their generally steely eyes to the Future Met Wiki, attempting in vain to make sense of impending repertoire and casting at Casa Gelb.
“Two Boys demonstrates that Mr. Muhly is capable of very great things indeed, offering extended glimpses of the kind of masterpiece he just missed writing here, and, more happily, of the kind of masterpiece I feel confident he will write in the future.”
Who knows what to expect from an opera about the Internet?
La Cieca predicts you won’t be seeing any puritans at the Met next season, except of course for the ones who slouch around during intermission hissing, “You call that a trill?”
La Cieca has been sniffing around her generally reliable (and fragrant) sources, and she thinks she has pieced together a list of the dozen operas to be featured in the 2013-2014 season of “The Met: Live in HD.”
“Yeah, I was in London and I got a text message from Renee Fleming.”
Bloomberg’s Zinta Lundborg, best known for sharing a single eye and a single tooth with Manuela Hoelterhoff, overlooked the opera on Wednesday night and instead reviewed the PR for Dark Sisters. When a man writes like this, we call it “bitchy,” so when a woman does it, can’t we call her “dickish?”
“Five women singing together: That’s an opera fan’s idea of heaven. And though Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters doesn’t quite reach celestial heights, Wednesday’s premiere offered the promise of an exciting new composer’s voice.” [New York Post] (Photo: Richard Termine)
Open your eyes, sleepyheads! In the news this morning, our own JJ raves about Satyagraha at the Met (“a masterpiece of musical and visual art”); the ever-articulate Nico Muhly takes aim at the Met’s production values (“Mercedes Bass or Anne Ziff paid for the opera. What do you think is going to happen?”); and NYCO’s…
Composer Nico Muhly took a break between operatic world premieres to order a daiquiri and talk to our own JJ about height, haters and flight path. [Capital New York] (Photo: Peter Ross)
It will come to no surprise to the parterriani (though perhaps something of a relief to Peter Gelb) that the most coveted ticket of the fall season in New York is Anna Bolena, the Donizetti premiere at the Met featuring Anna Netrebko‘s lovely head. Complete results of the more than 1,100 votes cast in the…
Congratulations to the composer (Two Boys, Dark Sisters) and blogger on this day of transition from Wunderkind to Wundererwachsener. (Photo by Sam West)
The ENO was filled with ghosts last week. Spectral, possibly illusory figures fleetingly materialized in the Internet chatrooms that provide the setting for much of Nico Muhly’s new opera Two Boys, and brutal boarding school memories came back to troubled life in director Christopher Alden’s dark take on Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Here, finally, is not merely the music on the Internet, but the music of the Internet…” Zachary Woolfe reacts to Nico Muhly‘s Two Boys in the New York Times.
A few spoilsport commentators have complained that the clever marketing video for Nico Muhly‘s Two Boys at the English National Opera doesn’t accurately represent the somewhat dark subject matter of the new opera. La Cieca won’t take sides on this matter of vital import, but she will reveal to you, the cher public, that a…
The ever-alert PR people at the English National Opera (why can’t we have a company like this?) have assembled a “what if?” video to promote Nico Muhly‘s impending Two Boys, and thrown in an admirably scruffy “reality” actor to boot.
Enterprising Manhattan troupe Gotham Chamber Opera will announce tonight their participation in the commission of a new American opera, Dark Sisters, composed by Nico Muhly with libretto by Stephen Karam, conducted by Neal Goren, and directed by Rebecca Taichman.
UPDATE: A press release has just gone out announcing “The Metropolitan Opera and the English National Opera (ENO) will co-produce a world premiere production of composer Nico Muhly’s first opera.
Brit crit calls Nico Muhly‘s work “slow, painful death”; Nico calls Brit crit “cunty” and makes fun of the funny way they spell stuff. Which means that the 2011 premiere of Two Boys at ENO should be great fun for all us sport fans. [The Guardian]
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.
