Opera Chic

Music For Teh People: Georges Pretre in Milan's Piazza Del Duomo, Valery Gergiev Invades Schönbrunn

On June 2, to celebrate Italy's  Festa della Repubblica, maestro Georges Pretre -- who, by the way, will conduct Vienna's New Year 2008 Concert -- will conduct the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala in a Free concert in Milan's Piazza del Duomo.  Opera Chic, very tempted to drive to Forte dei Marmi for a nice weekend there, is now tempted to stay behind to enjoy the very unusual concert.

And in Vienna, in glorious Schönbrunn, tomorrow night Valery Gergiev will conduct the VPO (ze vee-nuhr) in a Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky program.

La Netrebka: "In Soviet Russia, Opera Sings You! Also, This One Time, At Band Camp..."

A momentarily clothed Anna Netrebko has a Marxist moment & tells the Tagesspiegel all about the joys of growing up as a singer in the USSR, and cheerfully adds that "honestly, we used to sing a lot of songs against you Germans, until 1986-1988 at least":

We had many musicals in Russia, I saw many of them. The words were nice and innocent, a bit naive, or story of heroes. We grew up in a different time. We had to read books about heroes a lot.
...
We sang all gathered under the flag, in the camp, we stood and saluted the flags, we wore red handkerchiefs around our necks... But it was fun. There was nothing mean about it, no aggression. We didn't know what had happened in the time of Stalin, we just knew that the future would be great. Everyone would be happy, no differences between the rich and the poor. That idea was fantastic, regardless of all the other stuff. The songs were great, too.

Unlike happy Rolando "I Sing In The Shower, In The Car, In My Sleep" Villazon, a man who says Anna "is so much different than I am" (huh), la Netrebka only sings when she's on stage (ie, when she gets paid for it): "I never sing at parties".

And let's hear it from Anna re: Rolando's recent candid statements about the ugly business of the marketing of opera singers:

Rolando Villazón said recently that he is not just a singer, but also a product. Do you feel that way, too, sometimes?

Sometimes? (laughs) But on the other hand I must say that without the media it would not be possible to reach the kind of fame you can reach nowadays. If you were however only a product, without charisma and talent, you'd disappear fast.

When asked a pretty loaded question about an old Cecilia Bartoli snark (a German paper had asked her if she'd rather have Netrebko's voice or her legs, and La Ceci very cannily and snarkily answered that you cannot separate the two), Netrebko responds calmly that she'd like to have Bartoli's energy. huh.

More later about a big Anna slam in the press.

La Angela Finally at Teatro Real; Set To Be Mimì At Liceu in 2009, If She Feels Like It

The splendid Gran Liceu blogger gtl torn t reports that Angela Gheorghiu -- looking somehow rough in close-up (see photo above) but thin and in b00balicious form -- has appeared the other night for the first time at Madrid's Teatro Real. It's her debut there because she had pulled out (o rly?) of a Traviata production a few years ago. Angela is set, if it all goes well, to appear in 2009 (whatevS) at the Gran Teatre del Liceu as Mimì.

El Paìs has this Angela gem:

"Great voices are rare, like pearls... the physique is unimportant".

What3vs!

Heh.

(as a bonus to the Angela fans -- there must be some, after all) this promo video interview has Angela giving a small lecture about Puccini.

gtl torn t also reports that Opera Chic's personal friend and companion of many shoe-shopping expeditions, La Ceci (aka Cecilia Bartoli), will be in Barcelona on November 4 for the Palau 100 concerts. 

We Officially Declare: Opera Chic As Harnoncourt-Free Zone

Some of Opera Chic's dear readers are all like, OC, why do you blog about every conductor in the world but a few of them, and esp why no posts on Nikolaus "Niki The Anaesthesiologist" Harnoncourt?

Because we proudly declared this blog, dear readers, a Harnoncourt-free zone. Free of historically-informed performances. Because they bore us, and they make the baby Wolfgang Amadeus (Opera Chic's version of the Baby Jesus) cry.

We are many and we are everywhere, fighting for the beauty of full orchestras with full sounds. We may not be fashionable at the moment, but we have powerful allies.

And here's our logo:

Garðar Thór Cortes Pwns Joshua Bell

We last reported on the Icelandic crossover tenor Garðar Thór Cortes in March hoping that his, well, frankly arguable h0tness would be catalyst to thaw the tenacious winter freeze. The two-time recipient of Iceland’s lol Sexiest Man award lol, double platinum star, in-the-right-light 80s heartthrob Corey Feldman look-alike, and singer most recently credited for drawing a younger crowd to opera due to his labeling as the "James Bond of opera", will add a string of free, public performances to his upcoming roster. On June 1, you will be able to find him singing outside of the Leicester Square station to the lunchtime crowds in the name of charity.

He is acting in cooperation with Shelter, a(n) UK organiz(s)ation which aims to provide social homes for homeless kids living in unsafe and overcrowded housing situations. Following the June 1 stint, he will move around the city to supermarkets, shopping plazas, and other railway/subway stations for a couple of days.

It has been overly stated that his appearances will simply be participation in the NEW MEDIA HOTNESS of /lame/ "busking" /lame/, which, to OC, is one of the truly annoying blights of urban living. We now humbly request Jessica (or any of our awesome London contacts) to go find him and pelt him with cod fillets as he launches into Nessun Dorma. Captured on camera, of course. Just for laughs -- //we have nothing against his honorable causes.

I'm Pretty Sure I 4ever h8 Poetic Theater: Thanks Nekrošius!!

Opera Chic keeps an open mind and will likely try anything once (except those adidas kangaroo kicks…that’s just gross), relying on her inextinguishable craving for adventure and innate curiosity. Which is why I accepted a ticket to the untouchable Lithuanian Director Eimuntas Nekrošius's staging of Goethe’s Faust. Put on by the Meno Fortas actors (a theater organization founded by the genius himself in 1998 that travels the world unveiling his productions), and performed in Milan's Piccolo Teatro di Milan over the past week for art students and assorted hipsters, this exhaustive, minimalist reading of the German work is a far cry from anything in the sane world.

Nekrošius isn't a stranger to opera direction, and has lent his vision a few years ago to the opera stage for Verdi's Macbeth in Italy and Moscow, and directed a 2005 Boris Godunov with the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (and with our favorite Ferruccio “I Got Teh Powah” Furlanetto), but next time I'd rather seek-out a bit of Verdi or Mussorgsky accompaniment to make his direction a bit more palatable and digestible.

(The theater Piccolo Teatro Strehler in Largo Greppi)

Let's just put it out there right away: OC left after the first intermission, a mere 45-minutes into the 4 hour adventure. In Latvian with Italian titles whizzing by above the stage, my patience just couldn't remain intact. Yeah, that. And then there was the shaded light bulb strung over the stage, vigorously pulled like a puppet from the four corners for about twenty minutes, while flashing the audience (and right into my eyes) as a seizure-inducing, spastic strobe light.

What I witnessed in the first 45-minutes of this direction of Goethe‘s Faustian legend was a dark, oppressive, confusing world filled with wild gesture, bizarre (but understandable) symbolism, and other assorted weird things. I "get" Nekrošius's theatrical language, but I just don't care for it -- it's too obscure for the sake of being existential.

Thank gawd I missed this, or my eyes would have been rolling so hard, they would have scraped-off my Dior eyeliner: "In the final scene, all the characters ramble in the darkness of obscurity, with stretched out hands, helpless and blind." omg man is all alone in this huge dark abyss of humanity. omg halp halp omg. Faust, the perpetual loner, wandering in solitude to soothe his cleaved soul. Moar black turtlenecks + clove cigarettes + hijacked copies of  Dante's Inferno. get out get out NOW the LAMENESS is calling from *inside* the house!

A few impressions before I cut out?: The scenery included a bathtub wrapped in gold hanging upside-down from the stage; a black Ringu well where the townspeople came out of; a little monkey guy running around the stage clapping cymbals and catching skeet targets between them; a bicyclist with a pillow on his handlebars that would ride around the stage with his head resting on said paellow.

Nekrošius apparently has a cult following here in Italy, and is regarded as a master of modern stage directing, untouchable by the lauding critics, likes to kiss babies, helps old ladies cross the street, and saves kittens from burning buildings. Obviously, my ingrained American predispositions are still battling my impending European assimilation. In any event, when I got back to villa OC, I cracked the Domingo, Freni, Prêtre Paris Faust to wipe clean the slate of that oppressive doomsday acid trip that had been fausted upon me.

//heh. did you see what I did there?

Gluck's Merlin: Magic Spoleto USA

The Spoleto USA Festival, is not only staging a great underrated Kurt Weill, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, but it's also staging one of our favorite operine, Gluck's delicious L'ile de Merlin, a total rarity for US audiences, it's actually the US premiere of the 1758 work (here in Milan it's been staged regularly for elementary school children, talk about a world upside-down).

Harry Bicket, who is conducting the show for Spoleto, calls mounting the opera “a voyage of discovery. We’re all in the same boat — I’m not joking,” Bicket said, falling unintentionally into puns. “I’d never heard of it.”

O.K. He didn't go to elentary school in Milan!

Dawn Upshaw More Than Ever

The biggest yay in the world for Dawn Upshaw, who owns everything she sings and she will ever sing:

And her tackling not one but two major song cycles (each more than 20 minutes) was certainly an I'm-still-here statement.

Upshaw is, in fact, more here than ever. She held nothing back, pouring forth what seemed like new reserves of vocal power, yet sounded fresh and rested all through the demanding music.

More on her collaboration with Osvaldo Golijov is here.

Verdi Festival 2007 in Parma: So Exciting We're About To Pewp Our Yamamoto Pants

Five words (well, four words and a number): Festival Verdi 2007 in Parma.

The excitement is insane -- we're so moving in the area for the duration of the Festival. Coz October 1-28, 2007 will see this year's Verdi Festival bring teh house down with works such as Luisa Miller, La Traviata, Oberto Conte di San Bonifacio, and the Messa da Requiem. Not just in Parma, but also in Busseto, Modena, Reggio Emilia.

Among the singers present: Leo Nucci, Fiorenza Cedolins, Luciana d'Intino, Barbara Frittoli, Mariana Pentcheva, Svetla Vassilleva, Marcelo Alvarez, Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, Massimo Giordano, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Vladimir Stoyanov, Giorgio Surjan.

The conductors roster: Riccardo Muti, Georges Pretre, Donato Renzetti, Yuri Temirkanov,  Daniele Gatti, Antonello Allemandi.

The directors: Karl-Ernst & Ursel Herrmann, Denis Krief, Pier'Alli.

A new staging of Luisa Miller (directed by Krief); Traviata (on October 4) will be conducted by Temirkanov, directed by the Herrmanns. In tiny little awesome Teatro Verdi di Busseto (Oct. 2) a staging of Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio directed by Pier'Alli. On Oct. 10 and 12 Riccardo Muti will conduct the Regio orchestra (a first for him) in the Requiem.

Leo Nucci will give a recital on Oct. 3, arias by Rossini, Verdi and Puccini, Renzetti conducting the Teatro Regio orchestra. On the 25 Georges Pretre will be conducting Opéra de Paris orchestra, and on the 28 Daniele Gatti will close the Festival conducting the Filarmonica della Scala.

Wong Kar-wai: Somebody Hire Him To Direct Orfeo or Pelléas, per favore

Whenever we think about Opera Chic's many fetishes -- for opera of course, for Leoni's roasted potatoes, for vintage Gucci midollino bags and for the silvery sound of Ferenc Fricsay's conducting -- we cannot forget our fetish for the deliciousness that is Asian cinema. And since we've already mentioned what a genius production would a Lady Macbeth directed by David Lynch be, we confess that the latest news from Cannes, that most unstylish of tourist traps, made us remember how much we'd love, love, love to see a Pelléas Et Mélisande or, even better, a Orfeo ed Euridice directed by Wong Kar-wai.

Not that it's yet clear if Blueberry Nights is as awesome as the rest of WKW's works; la critique seems confused. But we so don't care.

As soon as Stéphane Lissner becomes Minister of Culture back in France and Opera Chic takes tyrannical control of la Scala operations, we're so hiring Lynch and Wong.

NZSO To Be Led By Former Heavy Metal Guitarist (Not Iron Maiden's Dave Murray)

(photo credit Robert Catto)

While the readers on the blabbermouth boards are complaining that he sold out to TEH MANG, we applaud the newest Music Director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Pietari Inkinen. The 27-year-old Finnish conductor could be chastised for ditching his former penchant of \m/ playing heavy metal guitar \m/, but as the youngest conductor to hold court at the NZSO since the 1950s, we think he has his priorities straight. He will begin leading the NZSO in January 2008 -- but let's just hope his tastes don't wander back to [insert crappy, washed-up, heavy metal band here].

He’s the latest bright-eyed thing to be drafted into Top Secret Proposition T182: SHAKEDOWN FRESH MEAT CYPHER, trailing Gustavo Dudamel’s recent LA Philharmonic appointment and Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Rotterdam Philharmonic newest stint.

pwnd! pwnd! \m/ \m/

If We Could Meet Famous People From The Past

Michael Tilson Thomas's fanboy meeting with James Brown (just scroll down & read post below) made Opera Chic think: if we could meet a composer, any composer, who would we choose?

As much as Opera Chic worships Verdi, we're sure that he'd bore us to death with the finer points of the boiling of his favorite cold cut, spalla cotta. So sorry, maestro Verdi! Beethoven we couldn't really have a conversation with, not because of his audio problems, but for his extreme case of crankiness. Haendel? Bah. Bach? Nah. Schubert? Maybe, ok. Bruckner would methodically bore us, too, and poor Gustav Mahler would just make Opera Chic anxious. Or sad. Or both. Bellini? A genius, but terrible personal hygiene, and we're pretty icky like that, Opera Chic is a girl who loves her running hot water (Barber Wilsons shower heads, of course) and Verde of Hampstead organic soaps, so no Bellini, sorry. Ol' Dirty Bastard? That'd be an interesting conversation, for sure, if he managed to stay awake long enough without dozing off in a drunken/drugged stupor. Lenny we'd love to meet, yes: we'd talk about fashion and Gershwin and how cool must have been to step on the Carnegie Hall podium that night in 1943, almost a boy, to replace Bruno Walter who had fallen ill. It'd be really cool, because we <3 Lenny so much.

But really, the answer, the obvious answer, is just one. And somebody already made the case. And you cannot say it any better than that:

If we could really encounter voices from the past, there is a musician I would like to meet -- it is Mozart. If I could choose, I would not ask for either Bach, Leonardo or Michelangelo, but just Mozart as I would like to understand who this man was and why there was such power beyond the natural and  not supernatural in him that fills us with awe. Mozart gives you the idea of something more, which  exists somewhere and has become music and taken a human form in him.

Mozart is clearly the expression of other worlds and other possibilities, which are revealed in him. Hence I would like to meet him face to face to see who this man was, who was charged with such boundlessness.
Riccardo Muti

You cannot say it any better, really.

When Michael Tilson Thomas Met James Brown

And here we thought MTT's hero was Aaron Copland.

Listen to the story of the 2006 encounter between the two maestri on the SF Symphony website Keeping Score.

We already liked him, coz Michael Tilson Thomas is a great maestro and unduly underrated outside of the US; today he gained a lot of points in the cool department, though.

And seriously, "I'm trying to get them excited, watching their faces, to show the unknown" could easily be a Mozart quote as well (his century's hardest working man in showbusiness, by the way).

Tacea La Notte Plácido

"The day of a Luciano Pavarotti or a Plácido Domingo selling out a performance on their own is no more".
-- Peter Gelb

Because The Horror Never Ends: More Palombi Xplanations on Alagna's Walkout

We really didn't want to come back to that fateful December 10, 2006, and Roberto Alagna's walkout at la Scala. But Antonello Palombi, then-understudy of Roberto Alagna in that most unfortunate production of Aida, has added more wise words  (Palombi has just gotten really, really nice reviews in a Baltimore Tosca).

Under the comical headline "The Tenor of Heroism", imperiled-kitty-saving Palombi gives the 100th version of what happened that night, and cuts all the conspiracy talk that came from the Alagna camp and that made us laugh so hard:

"There is a story that I'm part of a plot. I'm not."

Earlier, in rehearsal, his long, free-form hair had been tied in a taut, Samurai warrior-like ponytail. After letting it loose, Palombi looks more like a bearded version of a vintage, 1980s Meat Loaf. He gesticulates kinetically as he talks in rapid streams of mostly confident English, his dark, friendly eyes providing an active counterpoint of their own.

Palombi had been engaged as Alagna's "cover" (opera-speak for understudy) in a new production of Aida and was also given two performances to sing later in the run. On the fateful day, Dec. 10, Palombi was first told that he needn't bother being at the opera house that night.

"But at 4:40, the telephone rings again - 'You have to come here in one hour,'" he says.

By 6 p.m., Alagna was still nowhere to be seen, so Palombi started warming up his voice in a dressing room, just in case he had to go on.

"The door opens, and it is Roberto," Palombi says. "Thank God. He says to me, 'You want to sing tonight?' 'No, no, Roberto.' "

Alagna, a cocky Franco-Sicilian tenor with a considerable fan base around the world, prepared to perform. Palombi hung around backstage after Aida started, figuring he could go home once things were well under way.

When Alagna finished his big aria, Celeste Aida, he received polite applause. "Then," Palombi says, "one man shouted 'Bravo.' Oh, my God. After this - something I hope never to hear again in my life."

That something was a barrage of boos and whistles (in Italy, whistling is not a sign of favor). Alagna raised a fist at the audience and headed for the wings.

"I swear, I said, 'No, Roberto, don't do this.'" Palombi acts out a hand pushing him on the shoulder. It was "as if to say, 'It's your turn.' It was, how do you say? Brusque."

As Alagna passed him and headed into the dark backstage, Palombi noticed that the music was continuing out in the house. The character of Amneris, no doubt startled to find herself alone at the start of what was supposed to be a duet, started to sing her next lines.

"I heard a voice say 'Go on,'" Palombi says. And he did, without missing a beat.

Those who, I wonder why, feel like reading the whole puff piece can find it here.

Stéphane Lissner: It's All About The Benjis, Yo

La Scala announced today their financial data for the year 2006, and are happy to report a big fat plus: last year under new General manager Stéphane Lissner la Scala has turned in a heartening + 1.47 million euros profit.

Private sponsors and box office receipts constitute the 57.2% of the budget (42.8% is painfully shelled out by the Government).

Box office receipts (ah, those insanely expensive tkts) and corporate sponsorships have made la Scala a sweet 48.4 million euros (it was just 39.4 in 2005).

In simpler words:

"AAAAA++++ would do $ again!"

Bergonzi vs. Alagna: Sometimes Even Geniuses Have a Case of Teh Suck Real Bad

Sometimes people still ask us, "Opera Chic, why you still h8in on poor Alagna?", and our standard answer is, "'cause hes so lame, y'alls". No, seriously, Opera Chic used to be in the pro-Alagna camp back when he was a normal person and a good tenor -- we still like his 1992 Traviata with Fabbricini and Muti, his Don Carlos with Pappano is another winner -- and we still consider him to be the nicer/cooler part of the Angelagna couple.

And frankly, given all the crap Roberto took for his Celeste Aida last December, we decided to dig up from the Opera Chic archives a mp3 clip of the same aria sung by the prince of all Verdi tenors, our dearest Maestro, the genius that is Carlo Bergonzi.

Even Bergonzi, the best ever, who's Joe Louis + Muhammad Ali + Pelé + Babe Ruth + Joe Di Maggio all wrapped into one...well, even Bergonzi could seriously screw things up.

Here's a truly appalling example, his "Celeste Aida" at La Scala in 1976, conducted by Thomas Schippers.

You can download the file here.

Frankly, had Roberto butchered that finale the way Bergonzi did, he'd have been hunted down to his Principe di Savoia suite and executed on the spot by a mob of angry loggionisti. fo'reals.

Instead, Bergonzi got a few chuckles, and some rumblings here and there.

It really was the suxx0r for Roberto that fateful evening in December. Although we still get a kick out of his doomsday, paranoid, feverish karate-chopping theories of sabotage.   

Milan and Her Bevy of Booty

Following in the footsteps of a successful Milan fashion post (another exciting one coming tomororw), OC thought she'd present to our readers another dimension of the cobbled streets.

You see, for the traveler, Milan is more than the Dan Brown painting, the Dan Brown church, smog, and bad plastic surgery. If you happen to find yourself in centro (in town center) this summer, OC's highlighted just a tiny smattering of her favorite stores, all extremely accessible (a few blocks away) from il duomo. Without mentioning the obvious (Peck, anything on via della Spiga/Via Montenapoleone/Corso & Galleria Vittorio Emanuele) here are a few of the underdogs that are frequented by the hardcore Milanese:

 

Giovanni Galli, Via Victor Hugo 2. They make the freshest, (and most $$$) marron glacé: candied chestnuts, oozing wtih sugary goodness that explode when you bite into their juicy, soft goodness. el oh el. Served with a side of edible, candied violets. omg. You can also find like every gourmet sweet and chocolate native to Italy littering the small shelves. In addition to boxes of marron glacé, bars of Dolfin Green Tea chocolate bars, OC always stuffs her suitcase to NYC with Bi. Biel canestrelli, ipod-sized chocolate wafers with a dark chocolate layer in between. But don't try to whip-out the AmEx, as it's cash only in this old-skool establishment. From the display window at Galli, see the image below of marron glacé:

(Below are the canestrelli Bi. Biel, specialita' di Biella)

The next place that OC likes to drop into is the awesome Rosticceria Leoni on Corso Venezia 7. Plopped between Diesel, Prada, and D&G in a tiny little slice of a store, this rosticceria is invaluable to Sunday lunches (don't even bother showing-up Sunday after 11am & take--out only). The entire back wall is a gigantic, beautiful open pit of fire, with dozens of whole chicken roasting over the flames. You go here, of course, for the fresh roasted chicken, but also for the taste bud-blowing roasted potatoes and vegetables (all sautéed  in loads of tasty, sweet butter). Also the hand-made potato chips in white waxed bags. Also the gnocchi alla romana. Also the panna cotta served in plastic cups. Holy crap, you've never tasted anything as good as Leoni's panna cotta. The caramel has been caramelized by the smoke from the pit, which infuses the entire dessert in a delicate, smoked flavor. 

Then we have the irreplaceable cartoleria Pettinaroli next to Piazza San Fedele (entrance via C. Marino) for everything stationary. It's beyond elegant, with the same hushed interior of a library. OC goes here for cards, which rotate as the seasons turn (if you come here xmas time, you are in for a treat). But they always keep stocked antique Italian cards (see below), which are especially great for souvenirs, about 3 € each. Of course, for more selection there is the supurb  Carteria Tassotti, a chain of Italian stationary store that displays some of the sweetest cards ever (ours is in Corso Garibaldi, stocked with such beautiful things). There is also the insanely old-skool Pineider on Corso Europa, which is off tha hook.   

You can find beautiful sketched cards at Pettinaroli of Teatro alla Scala, found here below:

 

Another Teatro alla Scala card from Pettinaroli (omg whare r teh roads??!!):

Lastly, we love this little watch-shop because they do the work on-the-spot and only charge you for the parts (yah, in Milan unfortunately it's not like the NYC cobblers who replace your high-heel caps in 5 minutes for $5). And it's just soooo kewl! Set into the side of the huge Piazza Marconi facade (facing Duomo), it's Laboratorio Orologeria Duomo, right next to the new Super Duomo Mondadori. Sometimes Milan can be so bootleg it hurts. But we <3 it.

//btw, none of you tourist guides better try to steal my sh*t...ya heard?

///and per the usual, all images and photographs above are protected by copyright and intellectual property rights, which are controlled by Opera Chic. tia tia k bi

La Casa di Arrigo Boito

If any of our American readers ever have to make an emergency stop (let's actually really hope not) at Milan's American Consulate General on via Principe Amedeo, you can at least make the experience more memorable to your music education. Right across the street from the Consulate is Arrigo Boito's old house. A plaque announcing his tenure sits on Via Montebello, number 35, right around the corner. (Picture above is a composite from about 8 photos...so it's all trippy-like).

The plaque, embossed with the date 1918 (Boito’s death) reads:

“Arrigo Boito – who gave great works of music and poetry to Italian theater and he joined his mind, his heart, and his life in supreme union of virtue and beauty – lived in this house for a long time together with his brother Camillo, architect, maestro, noble writer on the arts.”

While studying music at the Milan Conservatoire and being bff4e&e with Verdi and Ponchielli, Boito lived a comfortable distance to the center of town. When he passed away in 1918, he was buried in the Cimitero Monumentale.

Since we’re not big on visiting cemeteries (although the beautiful and impressive Cimitero Monumentale really is something extraordinary), we try to take walks downtown past the late maestro’s house every once in a while to pay respects. I also sometimes pour some 40 oz malt on the curb…much love to my homie.

Silly Conductor Haircuts Part III: Sergiu Celibidache

Here's back our "Silly Conductor Haircuts" series, beloved by readers: this week we give the Bad Hair Bear Award, aka The Jimmy Levine, to our awesome Romanian genius (no, not Angela Gheorghiu), the late Sergiu Celibidache.

The only thing scarier than the Zen, bada$$ maestro's outbursts of pure gleeful anger at his orchestra or his unhappy students was the long-in-the-back super-slicked style he sported well into his early Seventies (he passed away at 84 in 1996, and in his last years he had mercifully cut the long-flowing Brylcreem curls from his genius nape). In the picture above here's his "I'm Dripping So Much Whale Oil My Jacket Is All Sticky Now" hairstyle, Tokyo 1980.

"Hehehehehehe": Rufus Talks

The Times of London kindly reviewed Rufus Wainwright's new album and put online a very nice podcast (direct link, .mp3 file) of a 20+ mins conversation with our great young opera-loving man, with the alarming contrappunto of Rufus's impressively scary laugh.

Grigolo In Australia: Whares Angela???

Vittorio "I Look Kinda Like A Poor Woman's Orlando Bloom, Don't I?" Grigolo, young cute tenor and ex Angela Gheorghiu boy-for-one-night (because after the first night she ran away and dumped his a$$), has flown to Sidney with maestro Gianluigi "Yes, Renato, Go Ahead And Let That Encore Rip, Angela Will Love It" Gelmetti, Daniela Barcellona, Roberto Scandiuzzi and Anna Rita Taliento for a Rossini Stabat Mater.

Now, we'd love to have been on that looooooooong Qantas flight London-to-Sidney just to listen in on the Gelmetti-Grigolo gossip. Stuff for educated palates, and all that, of course.

And, sorry, but "Little Pavarotti" made us roffle.

O Hay Whuts Up Miss H?

Le nouvel Observateur (magazine) is running a small interview with American soprano Barbara Hendricks.

At fifty-eight years old (although she recently slowed-down, unable to tolerate the hassle of travel and the chaos of the big cities) she's still going strong with recitals around the world.

Not that she hasn’t done enough yet: An entertaining writer (if you go to her website’s "Editorial" section, you can read her views on almost everything from airplane security to her love of silence), Goodwill Ambassador (there is a Junior High School in France named after her, and she is an Honorary Ambassador for Life of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees), political activist (loves Al Gore), human rights defender (via the establishment of the 1998 Barbara Hendricks Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation), Hendricks is a proactive soprano, and uses her fame to assist others less privileged.

Most recently in her spectrum of ongoing projects, she launched a new record label called Arte Verum, which she will use to release her own proprietary catalog of exclusive recordings. And since its establishment in January 2006, it shows promise: the first release was her "Canciones Españolas", a celebration of four Spanish composers, and an upcoming release will be her "Lieder of Schumann."

She explains in the interview that her old label EMI had been generally out-of-touch with the needs of the artists, was only interested in profits, and therefore slowly phased-out her works from their catalogs. This did not sit well (at all) with the diva, who decided to take matters in her own hands, therefore bolstering the very industry that would insure her vocal legacy.

Although we won't be buying her stuff (only suckas need to actually buy discs am i rite), we support the entrepreneurial nature of Hendricks, and wish her nothing but success with her label. ok j/k about that piracy stuff...OC would never stick it to the man or be like take that, MAFRIAA with our 32 digit hex sequence cracks and pw generators. never ever. oh my never.

Muti's Love for Morricone, Bafflement For The iPod

Opera Chic, proud owner of a first-generation 2001 iPod, who glumly looks down upon most mp3-playing newbies, cannot help to be moved by this great moment in last Sunday's Il Sole 24 Ore interview with Riccardo Muti:

"iPod? What's that?"

asked il maestro, clearly baffled by the interviewer's mention of the thing.

Riccardo Muti who is about to introduce Cimarosa's lost opera, Il Ritorno di Don Calandrino to the world again at the Pentecost Festival in Salzburg (May 25), has spoken to the paper about many topics: the future of classical music, the ills of a intellectual approach to music, his surprising love for Ennio Morricone and Paolo Conte, his eternal love for Naples and Vienna, "capitali della musica", his hobby of restoring ancient trulli in the Southern region of Puglia, little peasant shacks with cone-shaped stone roofs, and soccer.

Let's see.

Muti on the iPod: "Cos'è?"

Muti on Morricone: "I know him well, I had the pleasure to conduct the premiere of his Voci Dal Silenzio. He is without a doubt one of the world's contemporary best composers".

Muti on classical music: "Too many stuffed shirts regard concerts as a ceremony, the so-called 'experts' who strike terror in regular people's hearts, in the hearts of people who go to concerts for the emotional experience. Those so-called experts are glum people, they wear black clothes and  black sunglasses. They only know form, they don't know the heart of a symphony. They X-ray the score and keep audiences away. As Dante explained in Paradiso, we approach the art of music with rapture, not with understanding".

Muti on pop music: "I listen to some of it, with my three kids. But I confess I couldn't name precisely the most popular singers nowadays. But I appreciate Paolo Conte, I listen to him very happily".

Muti on his favorite cities: "Vienna, where music seems to soak the streets. But Naples has everything to become the capital city of Italian music. I chose to live in Ravenna because it's my wife's hometown, quiet and nice. I don't like parties".

Muti on his holidays in Puglia: "I have a strong feeling for the South of Italy, my roots are there. I chose to restore a cluster of trulli in Castel Del Monte, between Bari and Foggia, keeping their original style. Very few embellishments. I kept the rough stone upon which sheep herders used to sleep. The region's governor Nichi Vendola came to see me and appreciated how we managed to keep the nature untouched".

Muti on soccer: "In my home everybody roots for Juventus, but I am a Naples fan".

Say It Aloud: Giulini = Teh Best

Words of wisdom from the Dallas Morning News on the Giulini Royal Opera House Don Carlo:

       Mr. Giulini caught the elegance and grandeur of this score as no other conductor ever has.

Right awn!