For the first time in ages, a Regie production has managed to stump the panel! La Cieca will turn over all the cards and reveal to you that last week’s Regie quiz represented Haydn’s L’isola disabitata. You should have been able to figure that one out because the photographs depicted no desert island and lots…

First of many to associate our most recent Regie quiz with King Lear was WeillFan. It’s not exactly King Lear, but rather a work called Promised End by Alexander Goehr based upon scenes from the Shakespeare tragedy. This next puzzler is probably not Shakespearian, but then again, La Cieca has been know to be wrong…

Ever-vigilant Quanto Painy Fakor needed hardly more than a glance at last time’s Regie quiz to deduce the identity of the work: L’incoronazione di Poppea. Others of you quickly followed suit with the details of the company (Ópera de Oviedo) and director (Emilio Sagi). And now, Anna Bolena, right?

A little deductive reasoning applied to a little black dress resulted in a late in the game victory for cosmodimontevergine: in the most recent Regie quiz the director (as revealed by his signature minimalist frock) was Christoph Loy, and work was Les Vêpres Siciliennes for the Nederlandse Opera.  More quiz follows after a minimal jump.…

The end of the summer has been a quiet time for new opera production, but La Cieca realized she’d left you all having on the most recent Regie quiz. Or not hanging so much, actually, because calatrava guessed it: Il barbiere di Siviglia, a production by Claus Guth.  An all-new, insect-free quiz follow the jump.

Who better than Straussmonster to speak up at just the right time to identify Die Schweigsame Frau, a Barrie Kosky production at the Münchner Opernfestspiele. The “Walküre” in question is Aminta, in the person of the gallant and gravid Diana Damrau. Following the jump, the ADD-rific trailer for the show, and then this week’s challenge.

The unthinkable has happened: La Cieca managed to stump the panel. No one of you (or all of you acting as a committee) could guess that last week’s Regie quiz represented a production of Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri, as produced at the Nationaltheater Mannheim by Joachim Schlömer. This week’s puzzler is not exactly…

As Strephon so tactfully intimated, last week’s Regie quiz did indeed represent a “domestic and intimate” production of Verdi’s Luisa Miller, as staged by Stephen Medcalf for the Buxton Festival. (The performance of the name part by Susannah Glanville sent veteran operagoers’ tongues to wagging “Not since Fretwell!”)

More of you than La Cieca can mention managed to unveil the solution to last week’s Regie quiz: it was indeed Don Giovanni, as presented at Oper Köln and helmed by Uwe Eric Laufenberg. (A video on the Oper Köln website offers further visuals.) And now… something a little less extravagant?

OpinionatedNeophyte was certainly heading in the right direction when he (she?) guessed our previous Regie quiz suggested Médée. That Greek sorceress was indeed in attendance, but maestro Cherubini had nothing to do with it, because the opera in question was Mayr’s Medea in Corinto. The director was Hans Neuenfels, at the Bayerische Staatsoper. And that…

The inimitable Hans Lick has done it again, and before you exclaim “Done what again? Doesn’t he know the meaning of the word probation?” let La Cieca hasten to add that what he’s done is to guess last week’s Regie quiz, and right on the nose he was with Idomeneo. (This Katie Mitchell production for…

That trio of delicious candy-covered ladies tempted you to all sorts of wrong guesses, cher public, but nobody could figure out their relationship to each other, which would surely have given the game away. They’re cousins, you see, and the work in which they appear is Offenbach’s La Périchole as presented at the Komische Oper…

No luck with last week’s Regie quiz, cher public? In fact, nobody guessed the answer, perhaps because La Cieca didn’t include a photo of the title character of the opera. Check after the jump for said photo. 

Who could be more qualified than Loge to declare, “It just seems to be screaming Walküre to me.” The production doing all that screaming was by Barrie Kosky for the Staatsoper Hannover. La Cieca trusts you too, cher public, will scream — this time with delight — when you divine which opera is represented after…

It truly is a red-letter day when La Cieca manages to propose a Regie quiz that fails to elicit from you clever pusses even a single correct guess. Last week’s opera was something of a double whammy, as it consisted of a modern piece produced in a non-traditional manner. Enough suspense: the work was Henze’s…