Now the deadline has passed for the Immolation Quiz, La Cieca is happy if a bit puzzled to announce that the result is a tie: two of the cher public were able to identify 23 of the 25 voices in the quiz correctly.   Earlier of the two mo...

“It may have been Robert A. Heinlein or Napoleon Bonaparte who first crafted that variation on Occam’s Razor ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.’ But whoever said it, in whate...

A couple of tweets from Thomas Hampson detailing some grisly-sounding future projects, following the jump.

For your viewing and discussing pleasure tomorrow afternoon, cher public, La Cieca recommends a live webcast of Verdi’s Macbeth from the Bayerische Staatsoper. The transmission, beginning at 1:00 pm, features Zeljko Lucic and Nadj...

In a press release, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein at Düsseldorf has announced the cancellation of its  controversial new production of Tannhäuser after “many” audience members at the premiere claimed they had to seek medical att...

The score in the Immolation Quiz now stands tied at 23 all, with both leading entries identifying wrongly the same two segments of the quiz. The names of these singers associated with those two fragments, furthermore, have not been guess...

La Cieca (pictured) is thrilled to announce the debut of a new online book club  hosted by Norman Lebrecht of “Slipped Disc” fame. The rules of the group are simple: each month Mr. Lebrecht nominates a book, which the members...

“Just like the pyrotechnics the heroine of The Firework Maker’s Daughter longs to create, this new opera for children is a delightful, low-tech throwback to a time before CGI took over the world.” [New York Post]

You Wagnerians out there (and you know who you are!) who are so busily either enjoying this season’s Ring cycle (or, perhaps, not so much) maybe be fascinated and/or appalled to hear that the next scheduled appearance of the Met...

“The most sensuous sounds at the Met this week come from an opera with nary a love duet. In Dialogues des Carmélites—Francis Poulenc’s 1957 melodrama about an order of nuns martyred during the French Revolution—the music’s voluptuo...