Today is the 86th anniversary of the birth of the beloved Spanish Catalan soprano, November 1, 1923.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
A special Halloween trick (or is it a treat?) for the cher public.
Felicity Palmer has withdrawn, alas, from the Met’s spring revival of La Fille du Régiment. In her place, alternating in the role of the Marquise de Berkenfield we will hear Ann Murray (pictured, with friend) and Philip Langridge. (Oh, all right, La Cieca is being silly. Not Philip Langridge, actually, but rather Meredith Arwady. But…
Okay, La Cieca has just revised her standard for “Gayest Thing Ever.”
They should have overlooked the cell phone, but arrested her for this video.
The legendary costume designer for film was born October 28, 1897 in Searchlight, Nevada. Miss Head dressed practically everyone in Hollywood, including Helen Traubel, seen after the jump in an outtake from the 1961 comedy The Ladies’ Man.
P.S. The old site will be back tomorrow, promise!
Maestro Wenarto shows us how Tosca should be done… as directed by that exciting Regie wunderkind Luc Bondage.
Jonas Kaufmann in his role debut(!) as Lohengrin. This is a great, great artist.
So, as I understand it, Don Giovanni is the Great Gatsby?
A different look at Salome — from the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.
La Cieca realizes it’s not quite fair to judge an artist from a few minutes of video or from what is apparently a dress rehearsal. But it doesn’t seem to be going out on much of a limb to say: this Nadja Michael can’t sing.
The legendary singer was born October 12, 1935.
This is the best production of Siegfried ever!
La Cieca has a review coming (slowly) of the new Decca DVD of Der Rosenkavalier, but while we’re waiting, here are some clips from the telecast upon which this release is based. Feel free to discuss while La Cieca continues to scribble.
La Cieca has managed to obtain this exclusive snippet from the camera rehearsal for Saturday afternoon’s Met HD telecast. Note the “Hitchcock” influence in the cinematography. (Extra points for the first member of the cher public to detect La Cieca’s cameo appearance!)
This diva really is that diva!
That little Pinkerton brat is all grown up — and now he’s formed his own opera company.
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/_032vNxDrEI” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Puccini’s opera performed live on location in the Gäbelbach low-income housing apartment complex in Bern. More about this television project.
Sting is hoping to attract new fans to opera with his latest release, a film in which he and wife Trudie Styler tell the story of composer Robert Schumann. [BBC News]
The New York Times, in its never-ending quest to find more expensive and less relevant ways to cover the arts, has dispatched Daniel J. Wakin to Rome for an in-depth conversation with the man of the hour, Franco Zeffirelli. The legendary stage director, conceding that he has not had a fair chance to tell his…
And this is so not someone I expected to turn up at the Embassy Ball.
Goodness knows, and La Cieca does too, that not everyone can achieve the precision of intonation of our dear Dame Nellie Melba, as I’m sure dear Dame Nellie would be the first to remind us. But even without perfect tuning or even because of perfect tuning, certain singers achieve a more viscerally thrilling effect than…
Now, here La Cieca is somewhat confused. The music is obviously from Tannhäuser, but so far as she can tell the scenario for the video is derived from the 1964 Bette Davis vehicle Dead Ringer.
