Our Own Gualtier Maldè reports: Not every opera has to be a masterpiece. I couldn’t subsist on a steady diet of Tristan und Isolde, Die Zauberfloete, Fidelio, plus Otello, Falstaff et al. Frankly the occasional light comic bonbon or trashy but fun melodramatic tunefest makes a nice palate cleanser. I am talking Adriana Lecouvreur, La…
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So La Cieca is in moderate agony today since she chipped a tooth. She was eating turkey on white bread with mayo when it happened, which gives you some idea of your doyenne’s dental fragility, not to mention ethnic blandness, but that’s not the point of this story. You may recall that at least once…
Wunderfrau Waltraud Meier sings Isolde at the Met tomorrow night, replacing the ailing Katarina Dalayman. Peter Seiffert will go on as Tristan.
The Met website just announced this week’s set of winners in the “$25 Weekend Ticket” lottery. La Cieca counts 260 pairs of ducats awarded for the December 12 Tristan und Isolde and 50 for the following night’s Don Giovanni. Your doyenne is interested to hear if any of you cher public participated in this week’s…
It turns out that La Cieca’s fanciful prediction (of what Renée Fleming would wear from the Christian Lacroix collection) was not so far off after all! More images from the Met’s Thaïs after the jump.Â
“In response to the recession, the Metropolitan Opera’s Board of Directors has decided to subsidize some of the best seats for weekend evening performances for the duration of the opera season. Approximately 16,000 prime seats in the Orchestra and Grand Tier, ranging in price from $295 to $140, will be available for $25 through a…
According to the Met’s website, Gary Lehman is singing Tristan in tomorrow’s broadcast. At this rate, he’s going to end up one of the most recorded Heldentenors in history!
Gary Lehman sings Tristan tonight at the Met, replacing the ailing Peter Seiffert.
Our Own Gualtier Maldè reports: The Met’s orchestra and audience have found a new conductor to love: Daniel Barenboim.  The debutante conductor got a huge ovation before he even lifted his baton. Lots of applause for Danny B. all night from an adoring audience including a generous amount at his final bow. There was lots of touchy feely…
Some of you cher public will no doubt see the pendulum as swinging too far in the other direction, but La Cieca finds this particularly convincing and exciting deptiction of the relationship between Don Giovanni and Leporello a refreshing change of pace after the listless staging of Mozart’s masterpiece currently in the Met’s repertory. The…
Well, the first thing La Cieca will say about the Met’s 125th Anniversary Gala is that for all its sprawling splendor it doesn’t look quite what you’d call entertaining. Or rather let’s say it looks as if it won’t sound very entertaining. The visual element — you know, computer-animated Marc Chagall murals and Waltraud Meier…
Lord help the Mister who does fact-checking for the Times arts section! A correction published today thoroughly dispels all those rumors about  Lisa and Pauline, as seen in the Met’s current revival of The Queen of Spades. “They are friends, not sisters,” the correction helpfully informs us, and La Cieca will add that other than that one…
La Cieca hears that the “TBA” Donna Elvira at the Met for the December run of performances will be Dorothea Röschmann (left) previously heard at the house as Susanna, Pamina and Ilia. She replaces the previously announced Petra Maria Schnitzer (not pictured).Â
As of this writing, Ben Heppner is still scheduled to go on tonight in the Met’s Queen of Spades, an event advertised on the company’s site with, under the circumstances, a rather unfortunate tag line:
La Cieca is always delighted to hear the merest whisper of a rumor that her old, old, old friend Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh has been encouraged to grace the lyric stage yet once more. Therefore it is with the almost unutterable joy that your doynne notes that “La Dementia” will sing again in 2009 as a…
A tipster writes: Word is: The artistic administraion of the Met, always concerned about maintaining the highest possible levels of intenational artistic experience for their paying audience, are allowing Marcello Giordani to decide, after his Berlioz matinee, whether or not he wants sing the 8pm Butterfly.
In an interview in the Washington Post, Anne Midgette and Ruth Ann Swenson say the word “box” so often it starts to sound dirty.
“The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead – they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.” That’s how La Cieca (as author of…
La Cieca extends her congratulations to her little sister Opera Chic for a namecheck in the AP story by Ronald Blum on the Met’s 2009-10 production cutbacks. According to Blum’s story, dropping Ghosts of Versailles from the Met’s repertoire will save “more than $1 million.” In the unfortunately ongoing “more bad news” section, La Cieca…
Official word from the Met concerning rumored cutbacks in next season is that Ghosts of Versailles is to be replaced with a revival of Traviata, rolling over Angela Gheorghiu and Thomas Hampson. No word on what happens to Kristen Chenoweth, but Peter Gelb promises that the new productions are going ahead as scheduled. [via NYT]
This afternoon, after breaking the tragic news that Baltimore Opera seems to be on its last legs, Opera Chic added the startling tidbit that even the mighty Met is planning major cutbacks for next year. The blog says (with no source offered) that the company “is about to excise four [productions?] from their 2009-10 season.”…
A jump-in a due in tonight’s Met Butterfly, as Maria Gavrilova and Marcello Giordani substitute for Patricia Racette and Roberto Aronica . Earlier today at the production presentation and first rehearsal for Thaïs, Olga Makarina played the titular hooker — while Renée Fleming played hooky.
Cher public, who else but La Cieca brings you such in-depth arts coverage that you get not one but two reports from spies at the dress rehearsal of the Met’s new La Damnation de Faust ? After the jump, eyewitness accounts of the Lepagerie from Our Own Gualtier Maldè and Sanford.Â
A new spy debuts in La Cieca’s service, reporting from the first night of WNO’s Lucrezia Borgia: Overall, I thought the opera was worth the price of attendance. The costumes of the main characters looked like something from Star Trek. Renée Fleming‘s hair looked like Tina Turner circa 1984. Fleming was impressive, especially in many…
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