What Hervieux

Reviewing a CD of someone you have never heard live is always a dicey proposition. As we all know, a voice sounds very different in a big hall than it does up-close and personal. So if Marc Hervieux is your favorite new tenor, please don’t put me in the “crosshairs” just yet. I freely admit…

Out of the past

Since I had already gotten my Hanukah gift this year (my Nikon D3000 DSLR), I was surprised to receive a box from my sister this past week. One of the gifts inside was Les Urnes de l’Opera, a collection of arias and scenes recorded shortly after the turn of the last century and buried in…

Star-crossed in Crescent City

La Cieca’s misnomered intime No Expert writes: The New Orleans Opera Association likes to describe New Orleans as “America’s First City of Opera,” and it’s true that opera performance has a long history in the Crescent City, dating back to at least 1796 when André Ernest Grétry’s Sylvain was presented.  Since then, New Orleans, and…

Le Scandale, 2007 edition

Cher public, La Cieca meant to turn in early tonight, but she got one of those bees in her bonnet. This particular specimen of Apis mellifera is the “debacle” (as La Cieca has been astonished to see it termed) of Anna Netrebko‘s Juliette last Saturday afternoon. Such harsh criticism La Cieca has rarely heard since…