not about netrebko

so I'm up early today because this f*ing mockingbird is outside my window doing a car alarm earnestly trills and variations and all but in the silence of a Florida dawn the performance has the resonance of one joan sutherland at the met it would have been a miraculous wondrous concert if i had gotten a full night but we were up late hope fading looking for cheap fares to europe so i went out into the dawn looking for the little twit and i found it perched proudly on cable wires smaller than my closed fist and i ran out of ideas quickly so threw pebbles at it yes throwing pebbles at 5am at nature but after a few bouts the mockingbird wins it always wins because it's mating and nothing nothing can stop that i know i know

How to attract a new audience

(via TSR, and slightly NSFW) Buried in all the creepy subtexts is the juicy Don Giovanni of Mariusz Kwiecien, whose giovanitti has been making its mark on blushing audiences across the globe. Check it out in action in Warsaw (bottom picture) and more recently in Seattle (second picture). And very shortly, to Sieglinde's unmatched joy, it'll "explode" onto the big screen in San Francisco. Perhaps David Gockley is on to something after all. (Your move, Peter Gelb.)

More meat on the bone

(Hope Briggs) said that members of the artistic staff, including Music Director Donald Runnicles, had been cordial and complementary throughout. I talked to a few opera house insiders who said that they were shocked, because she’d turned in a fine performance at all rehearsals, including the last one, but they were afraid to let their names be used for fear of retaliation.

As a cynical old-school veteran of the civil rights movement, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a (perhaps subconscious) subtext here. This production is going on TV: it will be simulcast to a number of venues. Hope is a big, handsome dark-skinned woman, with strong African features—quite beautiful, but not exactly like most faces you see in romantic roles on TV these days.

Elza van den Heever, her replacement, whom I’ve heard many times and who also has a lovely voice, is a young South African woman of Dutch descent. She’s tall and pretty in a conventional European way, certainly destined for future stardom. I’m not willing to say that conventional racism affected Gockley’s decision to substitute her into the role, but by the standards of Texas, his last home base, Elza might be considered more telegenic, even though both are good singers.

Not ready for her close-up

M. C- at TSR is THE source for Bay Area opera news and gossip. For those of us spending too much time watching the sun rise on one side of the sky and set on the other, he recaps the latest scandale, this one involving an unusual 'firing' of a promising singer after the final dress, because she was not "ultimately suited" for the role of Donna Anna. Sieglinde is naive (please forgive), so she's asking if this has anything to do with the Gockley screen test. Hmmm, indeed. (And yes, even the NYT is on the story.)