La Cieca is still goggling at a press release she just received. Cher public, you can talk about this for a while. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New York City Opera Commissions Philip Glass to Compose an Opera Based on the Life of Walt Disney (New York, NY, September 29, 2008) Following a meeting of New York City Opera’s…
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Cher public, you may recall that it was La Cieca who was the first to break the story that Gérard Mortier was under consideration to be the next General Manager of the New York City Opera, not quite a week before confirmation appeared in the moribund print media. Since then the irreverent intendant has made a…
La Cieca hears that the “all 20th century” concept of the first Gerard Mortier season at NYCO may be subject to modification. According to an impeccably reliable source, the first season will include a rarely-seen French Grand Opera and an evening centered around pieces of Verdi done with a double chorus – one all African-American,…
According to a press release from the New York City Opera, George Manahan will continue there as Music Director through 2012. In the inaugural Gérard Mortier season beginning in the fall of 2009, Maestro Manahan will conduct performances of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and Britten’s Death in Venice. Manahan is booked as well for Szymanowski’s…
La Cieca thanks a particularly loyal member of the cher public for pointing out the most recent bit of hard-hitting arts coverage in the Wall Street Journal, as copied and pasted by that hardest of all arts hitters, Terry Teachout. La Cieca says “copied and pasted” because in this piece Teachout manages to blather on…
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…
Hunks in skimpy loincloths have long been a feature of productions of twentieth century opera, especially during the Christopher Keene era at New York City Opera. But you don’t often get to see much homoerotic action in bel canto works like Norma, more’s the pity. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/sFdrWy8TzSQ” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] [via Barihunks]
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…
“Sit with your legs extended in a VÂ shape. Place your hands in front of you, between your legs, keeping your arms straight. Now straighten your back and neck, and lift your feet as high as you can.” Well, my dears, if La Cieca had a dollar for every time she’s heard that, she could .…
La Cieca was disappointed to hear the news that the New York City Opera next season will present only a few concert performances. Well, in point of fact, she’s surprised that they’re performing at all, but the real problem is that she already had a mental picture of an NYCO Antony and Cleopatra starring Teddy…
A member of Facebook (which, La Cieca is told, is some kind of Information Superhighway thing that the youngsters seem to enjoy) forwards this invitation to what your doyenne (channeling Andy Samberg channeling Diablo Cody) likes to call Die Bloggerdammerung:
The fascinating and unconventional artist Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died yesterday at her home in Santa Fe. We in New York heard her only infrequently in opera, most recently in Serse and La clemenza di Tito at the NYCO and Les Troyens at the Met. She was scheduled to sing Orfeo in a new production of…
La Cieca has just learned the scheduled roster and repertoire for the Volpe Farewell Gala to be performed on Saturday, May 20 (and, if all this music stays in the show, part of May 21 as well.) Deborah Voigt will open the program with special material by Ben Moore, accompanied by Brian Zeger. The first…
It looks like the NYCO is going to one-up Gelb’s Met by nabbing Kristin Chenoweth first. The Broadway divette is in talks to star as Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance for a 16-performance stint at the State Theater in March 2007.
La Cieca has just heard that Neil Shicoff has canceled the dress rehearsal of Luisa Miller at the Met; Eduardo Villa (cover for the run) will do it. And La Cieca has heard further that Sergio Blazquez, scheduled to make his NYCO debut in La boheme in April, is having visa problems, so Gerard Powers…
Our editor JJ‘s article introducing La traviata is now available on the New York City Opera’s website. La Cieca is so cheered by this good news that she can, for the moment, refrain from ranting at length about the de-retirement of the egregious Dr. Miller, whose production of L’elisir d’amore will rear its ugly head…
Early reports from the Ann Arbor edition of the Renee Fleming Daphne Show (additional music by R. Strauss) might have been written by La Cieca herself: “”two hours of excruciating agony,” and “a snooze . . . . high register from back in throat, spread notes.” Well, at least La Fleming won’t the the only…
Have the years flown that fast? Well, you tell La Cieca. She just this past weekend realized that it’s been 25 years since Beverly Sills retired from singing. To put that in persepctive, the duration of her retirement (1980 – 2005) is now exactly equal to the duration of her New York City Opera career…
A close reading of Paul Kellogg‘s announcement of his resignation from the NYCO suggests to La Cieca that there’s some kind of major bad news that’s being kept secret here. I’m thinking that maybe it’s yet another setback in building that new opera house. To be perfectly frank, La Cieca has come to the conclusion…
Performers in the Neukoellner Opera House’s production of Saint-Saens’s opera La Princesse Jaune smoke pot. The man-bites-dog angle on this story, though, is that they smoke it onstage, as part of the mise-en-scene. And the artistic director of the company, this dude named Bernhard Glocksin, has encouraged audience members to smoke their own weed during…
Soprano Renate Behle is jumping into the NYCO’s Ariane etBarbe-Bleu, replacing the “injured” Carol Vaness. And while you’re catching up on the company’s casting and repertory for the fall season, do make a point of checking out the NYCO’s site’s multimedia “trailers,” written and narrated by dramaturg Cori Ellison.
La Cieca has just heard that Carol Vaness has canceled her performances of Ariane et Barbe-Bleu at the New York City Opera this fall due to “injury.” The opening night of this Dukas production is scheduled for October 6, less than six weeks from now, and the word is that NYCO is scrambling rather intensely…
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…
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