Sex Takes a Holiday

Now, this, my dears, is how you do PR!

Don Juan: Everyone's Favorite Bad Boy
Tuesday, October 27, 7:00-8:30pm
The Museum of Sex
233 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10016

New York City Opera's own Don Juan (bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch) in its new production of Don Giovanni, director Christopher Alden, and sexlogist Esther Perel (Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence) explore history versus myth, the Don's changing image, how Mozart's Don Juan relates to the composer's own lusty sexuality, City Opera's new interpretation, and Don Juan in the 21st century. Moderator: Cori Ellison, City Opera Dramaturg.

Tickets $10
Museum of Sex Box Office: (212) 689-6337
http://www.museumofsex.com/

Mikes Hammered

Takeaway from this morning's press conference unveiling the He Who Must Not Be Named Theatre at Lincoln Center: the Kellogg-era sound enhancement system has been "eliminated." [via NYT]

Koch blocker

So, you remember Americans for Prosperity (i.e., David H. Koch, i.e., the guy the NYCO is honoring on November 5)? So, guess which issue they're on the wrong side of this time? Health care reform? Well, yes, they're still trying to block health care reform, but they're multitasking, too. Now AFP is throwing some of Mr. Koch's innumerable billions at trying to block Net Neutrality.

In fact, here's David H. Koch's paid minion Phil Kerpen talking to Glenn Beck earlier today. Note the hyperbolic (one might even say operatic) manner in which the two congratulate each other on calling President Obama's advisors "Marxist."



So, all of you who may be reading this blog via the internet, La Cieca asks you to remember the date: November 5 at The New York State Theater.

Oh, and did I mention that David H. Koch hates the Olympics too?

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Americans for Prosperity Cheer Chicago's Failure
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

Spring wind-up

Another poll, this time asking which events are the absolute must-sees here in New York this spring. Please note that on this poll you can choose more than one "must-see," which is a good thing, because everything looks most tempting!

Forced to bend her soul to a sordid role

Pint-sized Broadway dynamo Kristen Chenoweth will make her fully-staged role debut as Cunegonde in Candide at the English National Opera this summer. The Bernstein/Wilbur, Latouche, Parker, Hellman, Sondheim, Bernstein & Wheeler operetta will be performed in the Robert Carsen production previously seen at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris and La Scala, Milan. Performances begin June 23 for a 13-performance run.

According to The Stage, "popular tenor" Toby Spence will take on the title role, with other casting TBA. By an odd coincidence, the ENO are presenting a concert only a few weeks prior to this Candide starring a diva some might consider "dream casting" as The Old Lady. La Cieca supposes we should just dream on!

And will someone please wake La Cieca when the New York City Opera gets around to announcing the casting for their revival of the creaky Harold Prince staging of Candide?

Ecco il Sidestep

The saga of the peripatetic New York City Opera continues. According to a story in today's New York Times (another Saturday newsdump! Well, at least someone has figured out how the media works here in the city!) Anyway, according to this NYT story, Gérard Mortier is kicking around a few ideas for keeping the NYCO brand from vanishing from the public consciousness during the company's "hiatus" awaiting the reconstruction of the New York State Theater (and, not so incidentally, the official beginning of his regime in the fall of 2009). The company is looking at "probably" four productions in various venues, including "possibly" Carnegie Hall, the Beacon Theater and "other Lincoln Center halls." Oh, and don't rule out the Apollo Theater or the Hammerstein Ballroom, either. (To tell the truth, at this point La Cieca wouldn't be surprised if she heard "Yankee Stadium" or "Splash.")

Well, let's table the venue discussion for a moment and move on to repertoire. Just what sort of operas might we expect in this transitional year? Of course, nothing's set in stone yet. Well, maybe that's an understatement. It appears, in fact, that nothing's even scribbled on a Post-it at the moment. In the Times interview, Mortier coyly suggests Mefistofele "because of its association with the house in performances by the bass Samuel Ramey."

Or, on the other hand, what about Rienzi -- assuming, of course, that one could count on "finding strong enough singers." Hey, what about a children's opera for the holidays, that might work, and, just to mix things up a bit, "a major American opera." But here's something you put in the bank: the repertory "must be great things," says Mortier.

Susan L. Baker, City Opera’s chairwoman reassures us that there will be some kind of announcement about next season in January. Or, failing that, February. Count on it.

Wanderjahr

La Cieca has obtained exclusive video footage of a presentation by Susan L. Baker, chairwoman of the New York City Opera, announcing plans for the company's 2008-2009 "season."

NYCO's announcement, dumped into the scarcely-read Saturday Times, would seem to indicate that our speculation of the past couple of weeks was, in fact, accurate.

Dark year for NYCO?

UPDATE: La Cieca has just heard that the "dark season" is not a done deal just yet. The NYCO board meets next week to make that decision. (Given how late in the game this is, most likely the "decision" will be no more than a formality. But La Cieca will keep her ear to the ground, not to mention her shoulder to the wheel and her nose to the grindstone. She also intends to free her mind with the intention that her ass should follow.)

La Cieca has been hearing whispers and grumblings from here and there for a couple of months now, so maybe it's time to go out on a limb and predict that the New York City Opera will take a season-long hiatus in 2008-09. Yes, that's right, no season at all, not until the opening of Gérard Mortier's first year of direction in the fall of 2009.

The primary reason driving La Cieca's gloomy prediction is the lack of any sense of what the repertoire or casting would be for 2008-09, even as 2007 draws to a close. NYCO, like other opera companies, has a fairly long lead time in planning upcoming seasons. Their practice in recent years has been to lock in repertoire and casting more than a year before the beginning of a given season.

For example, it was fairly common knowledge by the summer of 2006 that the current NYCO season would include Vanessa, Cendrillion, King Arthur and so forth; major casting was already set by then as well. Repertoire choices for Mortier's first season leaked several months ago: 2009-10 will feature The Rake's Progress, Einstein on the Beach, Nixon in China, Věc Makropulos, Pelléas et Mélisande, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Saint François d'Assise and Death in Venice.

No such details have surfaced about plans for 2008-09; in fact, an informant tells La Cieca that ever since early last summer "managers have been attempting to nail down the schedule and engagements for their artists, but have been met with stone cold silence from the [NYCO] administration."

This same source continues with a little speculation that your doyenne must say she finds reasonable enough:

The official reason given [for the cancellation of the 2008-09 season] will be that Mortier wants to freshen up and fix the hall in conjunction with NYCB (and they certainly will take the time given to do some work on the State Theater, remove the sound system, etc.) but the real reason was he was so patently appalled by every performance he saw this year and last that he wants a literal fresh start for the entire company, and wants no attachment whatsoever to the past artistic administration.

JJ and the City

"Soprano Lauren Flanigan turned her vaunted acting skills to the task of portraying the sophisticated allure of Vanessa, hampered more than a little by a stiff auburn wig and dowdy costumes that left her looking like Nellie Oleson's mother. Happily, on November 8, Flanigan was in superb voice, sailing fearlessly up to fiery high B's and C's and plunging into a well-projected chest register." Our Own JJ reviews NYCO's Vanessa and Cendrillion for Gay City News.

Please do try to forgive the weird é characters that somehow crept into the text; the editors at GCN are working on transforming them back into their original e aigu (é) state.

Utter a word

Create a caption for this photo:

The season begins. Finally.

"The Metropolitan Opera's opening week offered two super-starry nights that more than offset a misfired new production across the plaza at the New York City Opera." After some rather frustrating technical delays, our JJ's reviews of the Met's Roméo and Lucia, plus the NYCO's Cav/Pag, are at last online at Gay City News. (Perhaps at this point they can be read for historical significance, if nothing else.)

Oh! che volo d'augelli

La Cieca's little bird sang true: yesterday it was announced that James Robinson will be the new Artistic Director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

Moving on to another story that you heard first from your doyenne, ze bad-boy of ze opéra Gérard Mortier spilled his plans for his first NYCO season yesterday. In 2009-2010 he will offer Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach and John Adams's Nixon in China. Ian Bostridge will slouch into town to headline a production of Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice.

Also in 2009-2010, the Park Avenue Armory and Drill Hall will serve as venue for Messiaen's St. Francis of Assisi. Future commissions include a new Glass opera, plus a work from Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock. A full account of Mortier's press conference may be found at The New York Sun.

Meanwhile, the intendant's latest effort in Paris, a new production of Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, was not, as they say, taken in with pleasure. The headline for the Musical America review reads "Another Mortier Disaster at the Bastille."

UPDATE: La Cieca just changed the headline for this article (from "Charmant oiseau") to reflect the fact that yet another birdie has opened her little beak, spilling more details of the first year of Mortierie. Further twentieth-century works on the schedule include Vec Makropoulos, Pelléas et Mélisande, and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, the last of which will be performed by alternating casts at City Center. (Hmm, did someone say Patti LuPone?)

Photo finish at Lincoln Center

The results of the "Must See" poll are in, and La Cieca is declaring it too close to call and therefore a tie: Vanessa at the New York City Opera and Lucia di Lammermoor at the Met are now officially the hottest tickets of the fall 2007 season. The complete results of the utterly unscientific poll:

Which opera event in New York this fall is the most promising?

Vanessa (NYCO)	24%	214
Lucia di Lammermoor (Met)	24%	213
Agrippina revival (NYCO)	12%	107
Iphigenie en Tauride (Met)	12%	106
Macbeth (Met)	9%	82
I due Foscari (OONY)	6%	51
Margaret Garner (NYCO)	4%	37
Romeo et Juliette revival (Met)	4%	32
Madama Butterfly revival (Met)	3%	28
L’oracolo/L’incantesimo (Teatro Grattacielo)	2%	15
total votes: 885

On the cheap

Those of the cher public who want to attend opera on the cheap or who just want to get a jump on the season should check out New York City Opera's Opera for All program. The NYCO is offering three performances this week with all tickets priced at $25: a gala concert on September 6, La boheme on the 7th and Don Giovanni on the 8th. The outreach effort continues during the rest of the season when the NYCO plans to offer "50 or more" orchestra seats to each performance at the $25 price.

UPDATED! Start the coronation without me

La Cieca hears that Ruth Ann Swenson has withdrawn from her autumn performances of Agrippina at the New York City Opera.

This just in... "replacing" Swenson will be none other than the legendary Nelly Miricioiu! The Romanian diva assoluta is seen here in a 2003 performance of Anna Bolena.

Kitty Carlisle Hart, 1910-2007

Actress, singer, arts advocate, socialite, TV personality (and New Orleans native) Kitty Carlisle Hart has died at the age of 96. La Carlisle made her Broadway debut in 1933 in the musical Champagne Sec (a version of Die Fledermaus), then went to Hollywood for a brief stay highlighted by her turn as "Rosa Castaldi" in A Night at the Opera. (To die-hard opera queens, no performance of the "Miserere" from Il trovatore is complete without the interpolation of "the Kitty Carlisle high C.") In 1948 the mezzo-soprano starred in the New York premiere of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia; later she appeared on the "Straw Hat Circuit" in Carmen and The Merry Widow as well as classic American musicals. On New Year's Eve 1966, Ms. Hart made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Prince Orlovsky in Fledermaus, a role she reprised for the company's Parks performances in 1973, and again in 1980 at the New York City Opera for Beverly Sills' farewell gala.

A more detailed obituary may be found at broadwayworld.com.

Here's Kitty Carlisle Hart in a scene from A Night at the Opera, with Allan Jones (and, of course, the Marx Brothers!)

You are dead, you know

In yet another dazzling example of counter-intuitive programming, the New York City Opera has decided to exhume their quarter-century old ticky-tacky Hal Prince staging of that overexposed snoozefest Candide to replace their scuttled new production of Ragtime. (Gee, how long is it since we last heard Candide here in New York? It must be twenty minutes at least.) If La Cieca didn't know better, she'd think Paul Kellogg was trying to bring the company crashing down (a sort of sound-enhanced Götterdämmerung) before that meanie Mortier can get his hands on it...

Semi-ubiquitous

Our editor JJ's busy week included a review of the Met's Aegyptische Helena in Gay City News, and that panel La Cieca has been yammering about all week. As his presentation on the topic "Opera and Technology," JJ introduced this little documentary about your own La Cieca.

Mary Dunleavy joins in the fun

La Cieca has just been informed that soprano Mary Dunleavy will participate in tonight's panel discussion "Opera and Technology" at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. No word on whether La Dunleavy replaces or supplements the previously announced Lucy Shelton. Our own JJ will be there of course, along with a veritable constellation of opera pundits: Elena Park, Editorial and Creative Content, The Metropolitan Opera; Beth Greenberg, stage director, New York City Opera; Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and writer; and Anne Midgette, critic, The New York Times. That's tonight at 7:30 PM, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue (between 116th and 118th Streets), second floor.

Tech talk

Here are more details on the panel discussion "On Opera and Technology," to be held at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue (between 116th and 118th Streets) on March 23. The exact location is the teatro of the Academy (2nd floor,) from 7.30-9.30pm, and the participants, besides our own JJ, will include Lucy Shelton, soprano; Elena Park, Editorial and Creative Content, The Metropolitan Opera; Beth Greenberg, stage director, New York City Opera; Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and writer; and Anne Midgette, critic, The New York Times.