I watched Greta Gerwig’s heartbreaking, gorgeous, joy-filled explosion of an adaptation of Little Women in about the best way one can, sniffling in the dark with my best friend, the closest person I have to a sister.
The long evening didn’t achieve the degree of celebration it should have.
The proceedings took the virtue of longevity too much to heart; the night stretched on interminably.
In the Academy of Vocal Arts’s (AVA) clever pairing of two Puccini works, there was every reason to expect the fix was in.
“Trove Thursday” gives a preview of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila with a broadcast featuring an unexpected temptress—Dolora Zajick—who will celebrate the 30th anniversary of her Met debut next month.
Winsome, tony, and studded with overbooked bistros, Tanglewood is not exactly crawling with bohemians these days.
A heady audience paid top price to pack Carnegie Hall Thursday for just 80 minutes of unstaged Wagner.
“Trove Thursday” offers Così fan tutte with Pilar Lorengar, Josephine Veasey, Lucia Popp, Luigi Alva and Kieth Engen with Georg Solti conducting.
In the midst of Tosca month “Trove Thursday” assembles from the 60s to the 80s an Il Trittico in which each opera features an important Italian star.
Gone are the halcyon days of tradition and ritual.
Were La Rondine an IQ test, I’d be in trouble.
Saturday night the Los Angeles Opera threw itself a party.
That little place just two hours from the city is on the list of things I shall never understand, like the plot of Parsifal.
There is a self-effacing quality to Jonas Kaufmann’s concert film An Evening with Puccini.
I’ve always had a fondness for Giacomo Puccini’s Suor Angelica and apparently so did he since he often referred to it as, “among the finest of my children.”
On this, the occasion of her 37th birthday [see below], La Cieca is happy to repeat the story of how she came to be born (as first told in the pages of parterre box, issue #28.
Puccini’s evening of one-act operas Il Trittico seems to be riding a wave of popularity over the last few years, with a new production at the Met and several high-profile productions in America and Europe.
Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve makes its video debut with this release from C-Major which means there’s still plenty of opportunities for improvement.
The Monday, 12th December, Weill Hall recital debut of Signora Chiara Taigi, a strikingly good looking Italian soprano, who had made her American operatic debut this past March, starring as Selika in the OONY production of Meyerbeer’s long-neglected L’Africaine, was something Your Own Camille had looked forward to with a high hopes and a faintly…
To get straight to the point, the main attraction of this DVD is Renata Scotto. The Italian soprano, the first to perform all three heroines of Il trittico at the Met, is simply superb. She has élan in the moments of tension and a powerful, in-depth delivery. There is not a single word in the…
It’s safe to say that there has been a lot of talk about Rufus Wainwright’s opera Prima Donna, which received its London premiere this week.
A recent production of Il Trittico, recorded in Modena, was originally published on DVD by TDK two years ago. However, its new release on Blu-ray — along with the attention this Puccini masterpiece has received thanks to a handful of recent high-profile productions — has prompted me to take another look. Although this video was…
The headlined phrase is a neologism (La Cieca should know, because she just made it up) and therefore will require a bit of explanation. Bear with your doyenne, cher public, because there’s eventually going to be a CD review in here somewhere. So. Many, many years ago, ere the earth was young and all that,…
Those of you cher public who ordered and enjoyed Decca’s bargain Wagner box may now be interested in a bargain Puccini edition offered by EMI. The set, Puccini: The Operas, retails for $59.98 (less than four bucks a disc) and includes complete performances of:Â
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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