“It’s just that it seems rather perverse to have cast such opulent voices and then given them not much to sing…. the role of Anna Nicole would not stretch Danielle de Niese.” Loyal parterrian Jondrytay (not pictured) looked in on the Royal Opera’s Anna Nicole and shared this thoughts on his blog Not So Wunderbar.
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“It’s no spoiler to reveal that, at the end of Hansel and Gretel, the kids defeat the witch. In the Met’s production of Humperdinck’s fairy-tale opera, the singers of the title roles steal the show, as well.” [NY POST]
La Cieca is a big enough woman to admit when she is bested, and bested she is… in the Tubedubber department.
And this is so not someone I expected to turn up at the Embassy Ball.
Régine Crespin, whose “Very Best” you’ll want to possess; Joan Crawford, in the 1947 film noir Possessed.
In a startling and sudden transition from high to pop culture, the Bayreuther Festspiele GmbH has announced they are producing a television film about their recent changeover in leadership to a partnership between half-sisters Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner. Casting for the film is just what you might have expected.
La Cieca is fully aware that Anna Netrebko is a dress size or two bigger now than she was a couple of years ago. And yet, there is no excuse, no excuse I tell you, to transform the young courtesan Violetta Valery into the middle-aged dowager Mrs. Claypool. Now, La Cieca has a couple of…
Your doyenne makes fun of Jessye Norman from time to time here at parterre.com, because we love her, you know. So it is with particular delight that La Cieca wishes La Jess “toi toi toi” on her Broadway debut in the hit musical Rock of Ages.
Lucky patrons of San Francisco Opera, who get to see Liza Minnelli in her first staged Tosca!
Mary-Louise Parker, who smokes pot on TV; Angela Gheorghiu, who sings Carmen next year at the Met.
Meanwhile, in Zürich, Vesselina Kasarova stars in The Alessandra Marc Story. And in other “this diva/that diva” news, Tyne Daly is now doing a one-woman show on the life of Eileen Farrell.
Emily Magee plays Tosca (in a Robert Carsen production in Zurich); Zarah Leander lives for art.
Sharp-eyed reader Sadie Salome writes: It seems I was the only one spent much of last night’s letter scene peering through her binoculars at Karita Mattila‘s fine acting, because I see no report on your site of last night’s mishap (and if it isn’t on your site, then it obviously hasn’t been reported anywhere!) As you…
La Cieca thinks any revival of Adriana Lecouvreur is reason for rejoicing, though this photo made her stop and wonder: since when does Hillary Clinton sing verismo? Oh, all right, it’s La Cieca’s little joke. Our Secretary of State has not sung any opera role, recently anyhow. The Hillary lookalike is none other than Nelly…
Dramatic mezzo Ildikó Komlósi and traumatic mess Elizabeth Taylor.
Brothers under the Lederhosen: Alice Coote and Helmut Berger.
Watching the Richard Tucker Gala just now, La Cieca is reminded to something she said to a companion after an early Diana Damrau Met performance (Ariadne, she thinks it was.) What La Cieca said was, “Well, you can send all the others home, because we’ve found our Neely O’Hara!”
Tim Ashley in the Guardian Unlimited writes: When Hansel and Gretel are out of the house, their parents (Thomas Allen and Elizabeth Connell) prepare to have sex on one of the children’s beds, and we recognise the potential for deeply inappropriate behaviour lurking behind this family’s facade. And speaking of deeply inappropriate behaviour, is Anja…
Left to right: Lypsinka in As I Lay Lip-Synching and Anne Sofie von Otter in The Rake’s Progress. (Thanks to Opera Chic for finding the Stravinsky production photo!)
If you ever wondered, cher public, what Adriana Lecouvreur would look like as a Charles Busch “Grande Dame Guignol” epic, well, now here’s your chance. (It’s surely coincidental, though serendipitous, that mezzo-soprano Marianna Bódi so closely resembles Olivia de Havilland circa Lady in a Cage.)
The legendary dramatic tenor is 82 years old today. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/yyLUIxpg-KY” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Joining Vickers for this 1967 clip from Die Walküre is Gundula “They tried to make me go to rehab” Janowitz.
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