BASTA: Only God can make a tree
“Hey. Sorry to trouble you. I was wondering if I could have a word with my client.”
Lucia di Lammermoor
177 pieces since 2005 — at 4 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
177
pieces
4
companies
22
years
Company Algonquin Opera
BASTA: Altro sangue scorrerà!
For tonight’s distinguished premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Algonquin Opera, there would in fact be far more blue hairs in the audience than blue collars.
Company Chicago Lyric Opera
‘Tis new to thee
Donizetti’s bel canto masterpiece Lucia di Lammermoor returned to Chicago Lyric Opera on Saturday evening.
Company Los Angeles Opera
The gala lilies are in bloom again
Saturday night the Los Angeles Opera threw itself a party.
Company Metropolitan Opera
Paul Plishka 1941-2025
The American bass, a fixture of the Metropolitan Opera between 1967 and 2018, was 83.
Quicksilver princess
Trove Thursday remembers Edita Gruberová with live recordings of two of the three operas I heard her perform at the Met: a 1985 Munich La Traviata with Neil Shicoff and Wolfgang Brendel conducted by Carlos Kleiber and an I Puritani from Vienna 1994 featuring two other artists who recently left us too soon: Marcello Giordani and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
The finale countdown
Our Own JJ catches up with the tail end of the Met season.
There arose such a clatter
With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
Winter afternoon’s dream
It took the better part of a decade—including two high-profile cancelations—or New York to finally hear Anna Netrebko in recital.
Kokusai himitsu keisatsu
You perhaps will not be completely flabbergasted that La Cieca has a spy following the Met’s Japan tour (pictured). The reports thus far (I mean, once the ragtag band of misfits finally landed in the Land of the Rising Sun) are not particularly scandalous, but, please give our operative time!
Gentleman prefers brunettes
It’s no easy easy task to “re-review” one of the most discussed and scrutinized opera productions of the last few years. Mary Zimmerman’s mise-en-scène of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor has been extensively examined since it was chosen to inaugurate the 2007/08 season of the Metropolitan Opera, provoking very mixed reactions both from the professional critics […]
Fish story
A helpful reader has pointed La Cieca to an interview in the current Opera News, a publication she picks up all too infrequently, alas. But the chitchat between Brian Kellow and Francesca Zambello is just too delicious to ignore. Ms. Zambello is the director of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, a show that just last week […]
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!
