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.
A Baroque Valentine’s with Opera Lafayette | Feb | DC & NYC
Celebrate love in all its guises with tender ballads, amorous duets, cheeky verses, and bawdy drinking songs plus food, cocktails and wine.
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.…
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?
Or, for those of you who don’t take pleasure as La Cieca does in inventing totally bogus German compound words, Itinerary for the Regie Tour. Your doyenne and faithful sidekick Dawn Fatale (also pictured) will be hitting the continent later this week for a taste of productions done in the German style. Any European members…
Usually the idea of the Regie quiz is: you know the music, but the visuals are unfamiliar. Now let’s try it a different way.
Though semi ramide got there first, kudos as well to Indiana Loiterer III for pinpointing the exact scenes of Rusalka depicted in this Barrie Kosky production for the Komische Oper Berlin—a staging, by the way, that your own doyenne will witness a couple of weeks from now during her Regietournee. After the jump, video of…
The several of you who guessed Iolanthe for last week’s Regie quiz were, well, not quite as wrong as everyone else. The work in question was Birtwhistle’s The Io Passion as performed at the Wiener Kammeroper in a staging by Nicola Raab. (But of course!) Moving on: so, what are these folks up to?
So many wonderful guesses on the most recent Regie quiz, but curiously only the very early Alexander and the very late luvtennis proved veritable William Tells in their accuracy: that applicious opera is Cosi fan tutte. The production for the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus is by Philipp Himmelmann. Our next quiz is one of the most difficult…
Our most recent Regie quiz was just too easy! Among many correct guesses ipomoea was first to discern Carmen amongst the pit bulls and jockstraps, followed closely by Billys Butt and WeillFan offering important refinements to the original theory. The production for Opera North was by Daniel Kramer. No dogs in the current quiz, but…
In the summer of 2007, at the height of the heated speculation and public debates over who would succeed Wolfgang Wagner as the head of the Bayreuth Festival, his daughter, Katharina Wagner presented a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the festival, replacing the mind-numbingly boring one by her father (his third at…
La Cieca applauds cosmodimontevergine for so elegant a solution to the previous Regie quiz. As hinted by the YouTube clip, the piece is indeed Kalman’s Die Csárdásfürstin, as performed at Oper Köln in a production by Bernd Mottl. A clip from this unusual take on the classic operetta, plus our next Regie quiz, after the…
The Germans have a word for everything except what La Cieca is about to propose, which is why she made up her own Mammutwort for, well, a contest having to do with stage productions, specifically those of Wagner music dramas. (The “consecration” is understood, you see.) The rules and what you can win, after the…
Those sleek monochromatic idols were, in fact, film stars in last week’s Regie quiz. This Opéra national du Rhin production of La Belle Hélène, directed by Mariame Clément, won half credit for talented cosmodimontevergine, who recognized William Randolph Hearst’s neo-classical swimming pool in San Simeon and recalled the use of that image in a recent staging…
Willy Decker’s Traviata has garnered praise from critics and audiences alike in the week since its Metropolitan premiere, but (as was to be expected) this praise comes over the complaints of a select few traditionalists, a handful of lonely boos amid the mostly enthusiastic applause. Their objection (as usual) is that Decker’s production betrays the…
“Decker’s vision of Traviata, like most great productions, combines emotional truth with intellectual rigor—or, rather, there is a synergy between these two qualities that illuminates the entire work.” Our Own JJ takes apart the giant watch to find out what makes it tick, over at Musical America.
La Cieca is shocked, shocked to see that not a one of you clever cher public were able to work out the solution to last week’s Regie quiz. Admittedly it’s a work not very often revived, but it should at least be a familiar title: Rossini’s Semiramide, as done here in a staging by Nigel…
As we look forward to New Year’s Eve and to the gala opening of Willy Decker’s La Traviata at the Met, it seems fitting to look back—by way of the official, live, DVD recording of the production’s sensational world premiere at the Salzburg Festival in 2005—to get some sense of what’s behind all the hype.…
The cher public are indeed making “progress” when it takes only a few hours for one of you (Orlando to be exact) to identify our most recent Regie quiz as The Rake’s Progress, as devised by Opera Cake fave Krzysztof Warlikowski for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. There’s video of this production as well as…
Our Own JJ (pictured) reveals what makes him cry. [Musical America]
The message of last times’s Regie quiz couldn’t be clearer: “La Cieca, schafft Neues!” Baritenor got the answer in less time than it takes to hum a Leitmotif: it was indeed Die Meistersinger, in a production by Andreas Homoki for the Komische Oper Berlin. This week’s quiz, therefore, is tougher, and La Cieca will also…
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]
“Theater ohne Regie gibt es nicht – das ist ganz einfach dann lediglich Literatur.” So writes Jürgen Flimm in the Berliner Morgenpost: “Theater without direction does not exist; it is simply only literature.” UPDATE: Our Own Batty Masetto has provided a translation after the jump.
La Cieca hoped you would have a devil of time with last time’s Regie quiz, but she was wrong. And right, too, of course, since the work in question was Mefistofele. Congratulations to Cara Speme, first to guess, and correct on the first try. More puzzlement after the jump.
Well, La Cieca thought surely by now someone would have come up with the title of last week’s Regie quiz, but, go figure. Prepare to slap your forehead and yell, “Of course,” because it’s Die Soldaten in a production that’s just opened at De Nederlandse Opera, directed by Willy Decker. Now, this week, La Cieca…
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.
