La Cieca has just heard that the acclaimed production of Parsifal by Stefan Herheim will be telecast and filmed for DVD release next summer in Bayreuth.
By La Cieca
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La Cieca (not pictured) dons her “early adopter” hat once again as she prepares to watch the live telecast of Lohengrin from the Bayreuth Festival on Sunday. It’s an online pay-per-view event (a ticket is €14.90), though the presenters promise it can alternatively be watched “on demand at a time of your own choice between…
By La Cieca
Musical theater doyen Stephen Sondheim is not amused by plans to “revamp” (or, La Cieca might venture to pun, “devamp”) Porgy and Bess, thus “to transform the classic 1935 opera into a commercial Broadway musical.” La Cieca thinks this controversy will make for a very interesting sidebar in the ongoing Regie debate.
By La Cieca
Not a fairy kingdom, but rather an unheated postwar Vienna ballroom transformed into an improvised recording studio: that’s the setting for Christof Loy‘s new production of Die Frau Ohne Schatten at Salzburg. The production is also (if not more so) notable for Christian Thielemann‘s virtuouso conducting of the Vienna Philharmonic and the hair-raising performances of…
By La Cieca
Following the jump, about 45 minutes of highlights from last week’s telecast of Bizet’s opera from the Gran Teatre del Liceu, as sung by Fabio Armiliato, Béatrice-Uria Monzon, Maria Bayo and Kyle Ketelsen, directed by Calixto Bieito.
By La Cieca
This morning, live from the Bayreuth Festival, you can hear the premiere of the Thomas Hengelbrock/Sebastian Baumgarten production of Tannhäuser. The broadcast proper begins at 10:00 AM EDT. For a list of web stations offering this program, go to Operacast, and naturally La Casa della Cieca will be open for the Chat Contest. (Photo ©…
By La Cieca
There was a lot of circling around the title of the most recent Regie quiz, so La Cieca can’t name a clear winner. Several of you were correct, though, in hinting it was Prodaná nevesta, specifically Andreas Homoki‘s production for the Komische Oper Berlin. Something a bit frillier next.
By La Cieca
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.
By Dawn Fatale
A reminder to the Regie-fanciers among the cher public: this afternoon at 19:45 (1:45 PM EDT), the Munich Festival will present a live webcast of Fidelio featuring Anja Kampe (Leonore) and Jonas Kaufmann (Florestan) with Adam Fischer conducting the Bayerische Staatsorchester. The production is directed by Calixto Bieito! UPDATE: The webcast player is now on…
By La Cieca
You only thought the “Brokeback” Eugene Onegin was the gayest possible take on the Tchaikovsky “lyric scenes.” Now, along comes La Cieca’s fave director Stefan Herheim‘s extravagant, transgressive, high-camp symbolist (and about a dozen other adjectives) approach to the work, “gay” in the very best sense of gay sensibility. Video after the jump!
By La Cieca
Yes, we know, earthquakes, radiation, diva cancellations and all that. But it does still seem a bit strange to La Cieca that the “new” Met, where Peter Gelb so vocally trumpets the vital importance of new productions, should send the shabby 30-year-old John Dexter production of Don Carlo (above) on tour to Japan the very…
By La Cieca
Demonstrating that delicate exotic fruits need not always be ignorant, dear Lady Bracknell guessed correctly that our most recent Regie quiz was, in fact, Salome. Thilo Reinhardt‘s production from the Komische Oper Berlin was not very well received, alas, though, on the bright side, it did provide a lively subject for the cher public’s guessing.…
By La Cieca
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke is the frontrunner to direct the 2013 Bayreuth Ring, Handelsblatt reports. (If the name sounds familiar, it may be because Haneke was announced to direct Cosi fan tutte at NYCO during the 2012 season projected by Gerard Mortier.) Dark horses for the prestigious Green Hill gig include Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck…
By La Cieca
Our Own JJ (not pictured) gets the Staatsoper Stuttgart experience off his chest, to the tune of about 4,000 words, in his new blog post at Musical America. Included is a massive and (one hopes) final deconstruction of the Calixto Bieito Parsifal.
By La Cieca
“In New York… opera directors don’t matter so much. In Europe, it’s another story: There, the director’s curtain call provokes the wildest excitement of the night.” The long-awaited “Regie” piece by Our Own JJ appears in the New York Post.
By La Cieca
An exciting album of photos from Stefan Herheim‘s new production of Salome that opened tonight at the Salzburg Easter Festival. (All images by Monika & Karl Forster).
By La Cieca
Only a few scant guesses at the most recent Regie quiz, and, alas, no one got even close, though perhaps that’s because some of our strongest players disqualified themselves, having seeing this production of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, as directed for the English National Opera by Benedict Andrews. Our next puzzler will be perhaps…
By La Cieca
“The world premiere of a new opera production directed by directed by controversial Britrish playwright Mark Ravenhill (who wrote Shopping and F**king) proved too much for one front row audience member who collapsed as one of the actors slashed his wrists last night.” [Broadway World]
By La Cieca
And so Wim Wenders will not be directing the bicentennial Bayreuth Ring cycle in 2013, in 3D or any other kind of D. In that case, who should be chosen to wrap his or her Regie around this massively high-profile project? There’s a poll right after the jump. [Stern]
By La Cieca
La Cieca was a little disappointed that so few of you guessed at last week’s Regie quiz, since the opera (though not the production) has been the subject of so much discussion the past few days. That’s right, it’s Anna Bolena, as directed for the Luzerner Theater by Tobias Kratzer. A trailer for this show,…
By La Cieca
Much too easy was the recent “Reverse Regie” quiz: all too obviously A Kiss to the Flame is a version of Il trovatore! A return to our traditional format does not mean a return to traditional staging, as you will see after the jump.
By La Cieca
Opera is about the possibility of transformation. An unassuming woman can walk in through the theater’s stage door and emerge on stage as fiery princess capable of making the walls rattle. Alas, these transformations inevitably fail to stick. Every Turandot must hang up her crown; every Elektra must put down her ax one final time.…
By Dawn Fatale
First night in Berlin, since the feared jet lag did not, in fact, do your doyenne in, was spent at the Komische Oper seeing Die Entführung aus dem Serail in the “notorious” Calixto Bieito production. La Cieca’s opinion?
By La Cieca
