Well done, Lindoro Almaviva, for not only guessing the opera but pinpointing the correct scenes and characters in Idomeneo! The production is by Ivo van Hove for La Monnaie.) And now for something completely less minimal.
Oh, phooey! Barely 12 minutes separated La Cieca’s posting of the most recent Regie quiz and the correct guess by bassoprofundo. By the way, your doyenne’s current crush Stefan Herheim directed this production for Den Norske Opera. And now for a puzzler La Cieca hopes will be a bit more challenging!
Bravo Monsieur (or Madame) 79CXR for your guess in the most recent Regie quiz. The work depicted is indeed Béatrice et Benedict, in a production for the Opéra Comique directed by Dan Jemmett. The staging, La Cieca regrets to say, was not taken in with pleasure; critiques are headlined everything from “The enterprise overall does…
The Met’s premiere production of Verdi’s Attila is terrible. Are you surprised? Attila is like a self-conscious stroll down Rodeo Drive – or even worse, to the Mall of America – reducing an opera about ruthless tyranny brought down by ruthless vengeance to a quaint and insipid fashion show.
La Cieca is going to claim doyennical privilege here and say that the correct answers for last week’s Regie quiz are disqualified on grounds of a) silly guess and b) prior knowledge. Otherwise how could she go on with these Regie quizzes, knowing that such wildly unlikely images would immediately shout “Die Meistersinger” to you? …
La Cieca hears that Bartlett Sher has already signed a new three-opera deal with the Met. The director, who completes his first trifecta with next season’s Le Comte Ory, will reportedly return to the company in 2013-2014 for two productions, one of which will be that new Nico Muhly work, Two and a Half Men…
It is not perhaps so surprising that even with the cleverest of the cher public participating, nobody jumped in with the right answer for last week’s Regie quiz. After all, the work depicted was Die Blume von Hawaii, the 1931 operetta composed, as you all know, by Paul Abraham to a libretto by Alfred Grünwald,…
Will was the first cher pube to firmly commit to Don Pasquale, and as such he will be counted the winner of our most recent Regie quiz. Special thanks to eckermann, who earned “Le Mot du Jour” for his meticulously detailed (if totally off-base) analysis.
This one’s not a quiz, because the concept is so elegantly obvious: Das Rheingold as an episode of Baywatch, with the Nibelung’s anvils replaced by a handier set of percussion instruments.
Congratulations LogeLizard for so adeptly pinpointing Manon Lescaut as the solution to our most recent Regie quiz. The production was by Graham Vick for the Teatro la Fenice, and we have a glimpse of this regie in action after the jump.
“Director Manfred Schweigkofler conceives a new production that pits the Capulets and Montagues against one another as dueling fashion houses. Against a backdrop of models, paparazzi and high style, Romeo and Juliet’s love for each other unfolds to its deadly conclusion.” [Opera Company of Philadelphia]
Right you are if you think you are, cher public! Our most recent Regie quiz did indeed depict a new production of Wagner’s Rienzi, directed by Philipp Stölzl. (Photo credit: Bettina Stoess im Auftrag der Deutschen Oper Berlin) No handy dome-shaped landmarks in this next quiz, cher public, so La Cieca will leave you to…
Our Own Ercole Farnese exercised his sharp eye for detail almost before La Cieca got the most recent Regie quiz posted: within 25 minutes he identified the work in question as Norma. We have video of the controversial Peter Mussbach staging after the jump.
A drag queen friend of La Cieca’s — long before she was La Cieca — used to have an expression she to describe the terminally inept. The queen would say, “That guy could screw up a blowjob.” By which she meant, of course, receiving a blowjob, i.e., just sitting there, or standing there or whatever.
La Cieca admits the Regie quiz candidate from a couple of weeks ago was something of a ringer as it was a new work, and a children’s opera at that. So it’s only reasonable that none of you guessed it was Antonia und der Reißteufel, as performed at the Vienna Volksoper. (Duh!)
“Unlike Ms. Garanca, Ponselle was among the many Carmens who have tried some real dancing.” Why is La Cieca not surprised that one of the few intelligent and detailed surveys of the dramatic element of the Met’s new Carmen should be written by a dance critic? [NYT]
Speaking of people what have “ridden that streetcar,” Antipodean diva Cheryl Barker‘s sudden withdrawal from Opera Australia’s first new production of Tosca in almost three decades seems to be based on her objection to the staging by Christopher Alden.
Last week’s Regie quiz can be summed up in three little words: “far too easy!” Practically everybody got it right on the first guess: Die Frau Ohne Schatten, as seen at the Opernhaus Zürich in a production by the hopelessly conventional David Pountney. A somewhat less conventional production of a far less conventional opera follows…
La Cieca would be fascinated to find out how you did it, Hoffmann. However did you guess that last week’s Regie quiz in fact portrayed Rusalka — as envisioned by that new parterre darling Stefan Herheim for Oper Graz!
“A Zeffirelli, dopo le polemiche della vigilia che lo hanno opposto al soprano Daniela Dessì, da lui ritenuta non giusta per il ruolo di Violetta in questa Traviata, qualche dissenso misto agli applausi al momento di comparire in proscenio assieme a Gelmetti.” [Il Messaggero]
Several of you guessed correctly that our most recent Regie quiz was La fanciulla del West, in the “leather bar” production by Nikolaus Lehnhoff for De Nederlandse Opera. After the jump, a look at more of this production in action.
As anotherjj was quick to deduce, the lady in the kitchenette was indeed Cio-Cio-San. La Cieca will note in passing that she searched through perhaps three dozen productions of Madama Butterfly until she could find one that didn’t immediately give the game away. No matter where one goes, the Japanese Tragedy is going to feature…
“Rache serviert genießt man am besten kalt!”
1. DON’T STAGE THE OVERTURE. Surprise: Verdi and Rossini and Wagner Mozart actually worked in the theater most of their lives, so give them credit for knowing that the overture is there to get the audience in the mood, to ease their transition from “outside” to “inside.”
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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