Jummy Jonas Kaufmann and awe-inspiring Anna Netrebko team for the great duet from Manon, as heard last night at the Waldbühne Berlin.
Here’s your discussion thread for this morning/afternoon’s webcast of Lohengrin from Bayreuth, cher public. La Cieca herself is grabbing a bite of lunch and will join you later!
“It’s difficult to push a boulder up a hill, recognizing that we’ll never get there,” says George Steel, adding, “If I have to take tomatoes from here to there, I can live with that.” For a translation of that poetic flight of fancy, La Cieca has resorted to Josephine Baker, after the jump.
Not a fairy kingdom, but rather an unheated postwar Vienna ballroom transformed into an improvised recording studio: that’s the setting for Christof Loy‘s new production of Die Frau Ohne Schatten at Salzburg. The production is also (if not more so) notable for Christian Thielemann‘s virtuouso conducting of the Vienna Philharmonic and the hair-raising performances of…
Following the jump, about 45 minutes of highlights from last week’s telecast of Bizet’s opera from the Gran Teatre del Liceu, as sung by Fabio Armiliato, Béatrice-Uria Monzon, Maria Bayo and Kyle Ketelsen, directed by Calixto Bieito.
La Cieca’s operative in San Francisco writes: “SFO’s marketing for the upcoming production of Attila has offered a rotating door of Odabellas. Sadly, as of the latest update, I’m fearing the musical chairs may have landed on the least favorable of the announced divas.”
What better way to celebrate le 14 juilliet than with a provocative piece on opera by and about two of La Cieca’s favorite revolutionaries, Zachary Woolfe and Gerard Mortier (respectively), followed by cries of “Liberté, égalité [and especially] fraternité!” from that madcap maven of musical mirth, Maestro Wenarto (after the jump.)
You only thought the “Brokeback” Eugene Onegin was the gayest possible take on the Tchaikovsky “lyric scenes.” Now, along comes La Cieca’s fave director Stefan Herheim‘s extravagant, transgressive, high-camp symbolist (and about a dozen other adjectives) approach to the work, “gay” in the very best sense of gay sensibility. Video after the jump!
A trailer for the experimental film The Violinist, promising “strange drama… sex… drugs… and classical music.” And, oh yes, with billing yet, Our Own George Steel.
Today is the 211th anniversary of the day the events in Puccini’s Tosca took place, June 17, 1800. (This detail is not mentioned in the libretto, but it is specified in the stage directions for Victorien Sardou’s play La Tosca: “La scène à Rome, le 17 juin 1800.” To celebrate this anniversary of this most…
A few spoilsport commentators have complained that the clever marketing video for Nico Muhly‘s Two Boys at the English National Opera doesn’t accurately represent the somewhat dark subject matter of the new opera. La Cieca won’t take sides on this matter of vital import, but she will reveal to you, the cher public, that a…
The ever-alert PR people at the English National Opera (why can’t we have a company like this?) have assembled a “what if?” video to promote Nico Muhly‘s impending Two Boys, and thrown in an admirably scruffy “reality” actor to boot.
Meet Jacques Snyman of South Africa, former rugby player, current fitness model and anti-bullying activist, and possible future opera star.
And now, live from Pittsburgh, one of La Cieca’s newest and nicest friends, Web 2.0’s answer to Louella Parsons, the inimitable Rowna Sutin with her video review of the Met’s production of Die Walküre!
La Cieca usually leaves the barihunks to, well, Barihunks, but thanks to a tip from a very loyal parterriano indeed, meet Edwin Crossley-Mercer, a lyric baritone who really does seem to have it all. (Is it fair, La Cieca asks, that besides everything else, he looks like a young(er) Anderson Cooper?)
A quick clip from today’s telecast of Anna Bolena; unfortunately the sound is slightly out of synch and the stage director is more than slightly “Kulturbanause.” But, still: Anna!
La Cieca was a little disappointed that so few of you guessed at last week’s Regie quiz, since the opera (though not the production) has been the subject of so much discussion the past few days. That’s right, it’s Anna Bolena, as directed for the Luzerner Theater by Tobias Kratzer. A trailer for this show,…
Three of the Met’s most cunning vocalists, Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato and Diana Damrau, wrap their tongues around the trio from Le Comte Ory.
La Cieca (not pictured) invites the cher public to gather around for a chat tonight during the Met’s season premiere of Pikovaya dama, beginning at 8:00 pm.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, Christopher Maltman (among others) in Kasper Holten‘s Juan.
Having completed her season of Giulio Cesare in Paris, Natalie Dessay next takes on Lucia di Lammermoor in New York. A glimpse of the soprano’s Handelian chops and perhaps a hint of her current vocal estate, after the jump.
“The People’s Diva,” who brought so much darkness and so much hope to us in 2010, is 52 years young today!
The evergreen American diva was born February 10, 1927.
Many happy returns to two big-voiced, big-haired sopranos who are still very much with us!
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.
