“She must be beautiful, but more important, she must be refined” “She must be beautiful, but more important, she must be refined”

La Cieca wants to be the first to congratulate Renée Fleming on her latest achievement: being named as the new “Gillian Girl” following the retirement of Anne Welles.

By on July 13, 2015 at 6:47 PM
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La Cieca is simply overjoyed to announce a handy and fascinating innovation at parterre.com: The Author Archive Page. Each of your doyenne’s stable of scribes will be assigned his and/or her own unique page where every story under that byline will be easily accessible—as, for example, the many and wondrous reviews of Ercole Farnese. Look…

By on December 19, 2010 at 1:10 AM
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“When I was in junior high and my parents found gay porn on my computer, I told them that it was just popup ads from parterre.com.”  La Cieca just returned from an interview with Zachary Woolfe, who gave La Cieca that “I loved you when I was a child” crap, but you’ll be happy to…

By on July 04, 2009 at 1:01 PM
6 comments

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!”

By on December 15, 2008 at 10:29 PM
115 comments

La Cieca is once more available for dancing in the streets and shouting from the housetops for the (admittedly off-topic) reason that the Technicolor musical campfest Torch Song has made its long-awaited debut on DVD. Only in 1953 — with the Red Scare, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the growing threat from televsion bewildering studio exectives —…

By on February 12, 2008 at 11:34 AM
11 comments

A double-header of Tony Tommasini delights this weekend in the Times. On Sunday, TT puts on his Captain Obvious hat to ask the musical question, “is it possible that [Nathan] Gunn‘s appearance has drawn attention away from his fine vocal artistry?” You’ll find that story right next to the photograph of Gunn with his shirt…

By on January 08, 2006 at 5:25 AM
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Anna Netrebko is Anne Welles! Rolando Villazon is Lyon Burke! On the silver screen, every thrill, every shock of the best-selling novel by Jacqueline Susann! Uh, make that “the best-selling opera by Giuseppe Verdi…

By on August 09, 2005 at 2:29 PM
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