Scotto talks
Parterre’s tutelary diva shares espresso and cookies with parterre’s fave scribe Zachary Woolfe in preparation for the gala Met Legends event honoring her next Sunday.
zachary woolfe
Aftermath the ball
Lovely Marina Poplavskaya, arriving at the Mercedes T. Bass Grand Tier for dinner following the opening night of La traviata, demonstrates that the previous Franco Zeffirelli production has not gone to waste. The latter-day Scarlett O’Hara‘s motto: “Reduce Reuse Recycle!”
Face time
As we look forward to New Year’s Eve and to the gala opening of Willy Decker’s La Traviata at the Met, it seems fitting to look back—by way of the official, live, DVD recording of the production’s sensational world premiere at the Salzburg Festival in 2005—to get some sense of what’s behind all the hype. […]
Solid gold
“Sombre splendor there is frequently not.” Zachary Woolfe mulls Don Carlo. [New York Observer]
Berlin ballad
Seven decades of difference in age doesn’t stand in the way of a charming interview between Marta Eggerth and Zachary Woolfe on the occasion of her viewing her 1932 film Das Blaue vom Himmel for the very first time. (Prepare to be verklempt.) [New York Observer]
An actor despairs
“Carmen, a passionate, headstrong gypsy and one of the best-known characters in opera, is famously enigmatic, but Ms. Garanca takes that quality almost to the point of anonymity. It can often seem not that she’s a bad actress but that she’s not quite sure what acting is.” Zealous Zachary Woolfe mulls The Garanca Paradox.
Season of the Woolfe
“Thirty years after the action of Tahiti the young son, Junior, is now gay and possibly schizophrenic; his former lover is married to his younger sister, Dede. During his mother’s funeral Junior starts a striptease in front of his father, knocking into the coffin in the process…. This was neither the sound nor the subject […]
Vassallo della man
“You see, I don’t play roles. I find color for every role inside of me.” The soprano Marina Poplavskaya likes to talk about how she sees music as colors. She is also given to morbidly poetic formulations like “Let the harmony penetrate you like a silent knife through your heart.” [New York Observer]
Everybody dance now!
“It doesn’t fucking matter if he means it, because the dancers need to dance!” No, that’s not, in fact, the refrain of the latest techno hit burning up the dancefloor, but rather society chronicler David Patrick Columbia, talking with Zachary Woolfe about “the web of money, power and ambiguous motives that has for a long […]
The never-ending story
Zack Woolfe, shirtless, and Seth Colter Walls take the High Line when deconstructing Dark Hope. [The Awl]
Rear view
“The Met at this point is not a place where even a talented opera director can make good, strong work, let alone a place where a director inexperienced with the genre — as so many of Mr. Gelb’s favored artists are — can be guided toward an understanding of it.” Gadfly-at-large Zachary Woolfe takes “A […]
Bright Lights, Big Ideas
Forget all the others. You need to read this review of The Nose. [New York Observer]
Peter and the Woolfe
The arts journalist La Cieca would like be when she grows up, Zachary Woolfe, continues his analysis of Peter Gelb‘s Met tenure — now all the more interesting since Joe Volpe has returned to the fold. [Observer]
Woolfe whistle
La Cieca’s old, old, old friend Zachary Woolfe will take to the airwaves tomorrow morning to discuss, among other less titillating topics, the controversial omission of pastied boobage from the Met’s impending HD of Les Contes d’Hoffmann. You can hear Zack on WQXR’s Arts File at 8:30am, on 105.9FM or wqxr.org.
Jacques off
“…the director doesn’t end with the ties between Offenbach and Hoffman. He connects the thematic dots, as if it were logically inevitable, to Kafka, who — wait for it — was also a Jew! This is indeed true, but Mr. Sher could just have easily have chosen Norman Podhoretz.” [NY Observer]
Domestic diva
“I can tell you honestly, I’m not that passionate anymore about singing and all this stuff, you know?” [New York Observer]
Les feux d’artifice s’approchent
According to the always reliable Zachary Woolfe, among the beans spilled at the NYCO “Koch” Gala last night was the strong suggestion (from no less than Rufus Wainwright himself) that a production of Prima Donna is planned for an upcoming George Steel-planned season. [New York Observer]
A bird in the hand
Whenever La Cieca (center) feels afraid, she doesn’t just hold her head erect or whistle a happy tune (though she’s been known to do both on occasion), she reminds herself, “You know, things could be a lot worse than what they are!”
Kiss me deadly
La Cieca is just guessing here (with some prompting from Zachary Woolfe) but she thinks she has divined the coup de théâtre climaxing the Met’s new production of Tosca. They shoot Mario, etc. etc., and then Karita Mattila runs crazily off the stage as the guards come rushing on. They search all about but cannot find […]
Man of mystery
Zachary Woolfe asks the musical question, “Who is this Peter Gelb anyway?” [NY Observer]
but enough about me. almost.
Dishy scribe Zachary Woolfe muses on “The Bewitching Art of La Cieca” in The New York Observer. Our Own JJ is profiled, covered, revealed, reported, what he eats and what he wears and whom he knows and where he was, and when and where he’s going.
the only hit that comes out of a la cieca interview is la cieca, and that’s me, baby, remember?
“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 […]
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
