La Cieca is happy to present the following readymade blind item.
48 comments
Sponsored
Call for submissions: parterre box‘s new Talk of the Town
parterre box is launching a new themed regular feature curated by our readers and opera fans across the world! We are asking for your favorite clips, recordings, and anecdotes to get people chatting, listening, and thinking.
Onegin, which opens the Met’s season on Monday, has taken an unusually precipitous tumble…
If Frank Castorf‘s work on Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth accomplishes nothing else, it should serve as a sort of loud disorganized reminder of the dangers of indulging in the intentional fallacy.
Teresa Berganza is the latest superannuated superstar to jump on the “I hate regie” bandwagon.
All right, I admit it; I finally broke down and read the program notes for the Ring in the Bayreuth program book.
Well, my dears, if you thought Frank Castorf‘s Ring or Stefan Herheim‘s Meistersinger were outré, then wait until you get a load of the radical take on Don Carlos by Peter Stein for the Salzburg Festival!
Revealed: first images of Frank Castorf‘s production of the Ring, launching Friday at Bayreuth.
We waited eagerly to hear the Munich-born Jonas Kaufmann make his role debut as Manrico at the Bavarian State Opera as well the German-Greek soprano Anja Harteros take on Leonora’s bravura difficult arias.
Soprano Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs sings the final scene from Salome in the Stefan Herheim production for Den Norske Opera.
La Cieca supposes she shouldn’t complain: the more time Lorin Maazel spends on Facebook, the less time he spends conducting Don Carlo.
As she herself points out, Zerbinetta is perhaps the first woman besides “the inimitable Heather MacDonald” to write a serious critique of Calixto Bieito‘s production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
Here’s a glimpse of the Regie route Anna Netrebko and Placido Domingo will go in November when they make their role debuts in Il trovatore at the Berlin Staatsoper.
La Cieca doesn’t branch out into The Film very often (even though she is quite the ardent cinephile) but the recent release—or, at any rate, the reaction to the recent release—of Baz Luhrmann‘s film of The Great Gatsby served to crystallize a few ideas bubbling about in your doyenne’s brain.
In a press release, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein at Düsseldorf has announced the cancellation of its controversial new production of Tannhäuser.
La Cieca (pictured) is thrilled to announce the debut of a new online book club hosted by Norman Lebrecht of “Slipped Disc” fame.
Your Wagnerian alternatives for today’s chat in La Casa della Cieca…
Two time Oscar winner and Quentin Tarantino muse Christoph Waltz is branching out into opera direction.
La Cieca hears that the opening night of La Scala’s 2013 season will feature a new production of La traviata starring Diana Damrau and Piotr Beczala, directed by… no, not Franco Zeffirelli, but Dmitri Tcherniakov.
The gripping Calixto Bieito/Kent Nagano production of Boris Godunov from the Bayerische Staatsoper—with authoritative Alexander Tsymbalyuk in the title role…
“With one of my favorite opera productions returning to the Met tonight, I’ve been considering lately what makes Willy Decker‘s Traviata so fine, so satisfying, and so worth a return visit.” [Musical America]
The Prince of Regie, who’ll direct a new Vêpres siciliennes for the Royal Opera this fall, is 43 years old today.
So, Piotr Beczala (left) has gone and blabbed to Luister, which is some sort of Dutch glossy classical music magazine…
“One of the things I’m gradually learning as I’m coming up my the 20th anniversary of writing about opera for publication is that you have to be wary about making Pronouncements.”
As with all good myths, certainly all the myths at the heart of Wagner’s operas, the juggling of symbols and archetypes and themes in Parsifal opens the piece to a great variety of interpretations.
Sponsored
Reach your audience through parterre box!
parterre box, “the most essential blog in opera” (New York Times), is now booking display and sponsored content advertising for the 2023-2024 season. Join Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Warner Classics and many others in reaching your target audience through parterre box.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, top reads from us and our friends.
Delivered to your email weekly…ish.