Opera Chic

Maestro Bolton's Xmas Extravaganza @ Assisi's Basilica Superiore

Michael Pitt, Probably Not an Opera Fan

The director said I was one of the last bohemian actors. I asked what bohemian meant, because I didn’t know if that was a compliment or not.

-- Michael Pitt

She Sings, She Dances, She's a Robot

Japan Introduces the Divabot:

(via Karlin Lillington)

The Pink Panther In The Rye

File under: creepy.

(via MobyLives)

Libération Says No To Censorship, Runs Massive X-Rated Photo On Today's Front Page

Quite often, France's coolness factor is wildy overrated abroad -- especially by many too-easily-impressed Americans. But whenever France is actually cool, it's very, very, very cool.

Today, for example, the daily Libération, didn't like the fact that the Mayor of Paris has censored Larry Clark's exhibit -- keeping minors out of Clark's show due to City Hall's fears of legal challenges (in France you can't show hardcore sexual images to minors). Therefore, to protest the decision, Libération printed a huge Clark photo, that one can not avoid to describe as X-rated, on their front page, denouncing the Mayor's choice.

(above, Larry Clark photographed by Terry Richardson)

Click below to find a link to the newspaper's front page.

Banned In Milan: Maurizio Cattelan's Poster

Maurizio Cattelan, one of the coolest men in Italy,is about to open a big exhibit in Milan. The poster that was supposed to advertise the event, though, portrays one of Cattelan's works, "HIM", a statue that depicts a praying Hitler, down on his knees. It's classic Cattelan style.

It has been deemed too offensive to be used around town, and pulled. 

Some are therefore calling for Cattelan to cancel the exhibit and move it somewhere else (Venice has been floated -- I know, I know -- as an alternate location).

"Do You Think You Could Sing... Pagliacci?"

See also:

Bill Clinton, The Opera

Bill Clinton will be the subject of a new opera:

"Billy Blythe" - titled after the 42nd President's birth name, William Jefferson Blythe - takes a look at his difficult childhood.

"Clinton's life is very operatic, over the top, the perfect operatic vision," musician Bonnie Montgomery told U.S. News & World Report. 

...

Performances are set to begin at the White Water Tavern, Little Rock, in September.

Sounds like "Billy Elliot" with politics instead of ballet.

Well, Al Gore didn't get to be President but his opera found a better venue.

Opera di Roma Drama: Carla Fracci Yells "Shame on You" At "Scoundrel" Rome Mayor (VIDEO)

 
Eternal ballerina Carla Fracci, 73, whose contract with Opera di Roma recently expired, yelled at Rome's Mayor Gianni Alemanno during a tense union meeting at the opera house earlier this afternoon.

"Vergogna! Vergogna! Farabutto!" -- "Shame on You! Shame! Scoundrel!".

A major WTF moment. Click for the video HERE

Classical Brits: Angela Won One, The Pope Lost One; Bad Frocks & Bad Hair Reigned

 

The abomination known as the Classical Brits went down with, apparently, a few surprises and an amazing amount of bad style and bad hair.

A Welsh male choir won an award (Pope Benedict XVI was among the nominated), Rolando Villazon won -- check this out -- the Critics Award, Angela Gheorghiu and her cancellations won Female Artist of the Year.  

The Daily Mail, appropriately, has the photos.

(Angela at the arrivals)

After the jump, the winners list and more photos:

Baryshnimoss!

Moss + Baryshnikov = ???

... Kate Moss has set her sights on becoming a ballerina.

The supermodel is working on a duet with Sex And The City star Mikhail Baryshnikov, who is regarded as one of the great ballet dancers of the modern era.

Miss Moss will star in a short film with the 62-year-old Russian – with the working title Baryshnimoss – made by the renowned choreographer and director Michael Clark.

The 36-year-old has been taking private ballet lessons with Clark and is set to embark on a gruelling three-month training regime before filming starts in Marseille in July.

The Wieler-Morabito Nozze Strike Again: Mozart Will Sell You A Used Car

On January 15, the cool peeps @ Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam are bringing back the 2006 staging of Nozze di Figaro by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito that made us seriously lol if not definitely rofl -- it's Mozart in a car dealership (Jossi and Sergio, the Viktor & Rolf of opera directors, also staged Don Giovanni among the beds of a furniture store and Cosi Fan Tutte in a 1960s youth hostel).

The usual suspects totally hated the concept but Opera Chic thinks that, in general, a man with a great sense of humor such as Amadé would have laughed, too. Not to mention -- but this is probably true for every opera composer who ever lived, except for Wagner -- he would have simply been astonished, and pleasantly surprised, that his work is still staged everywhere, still so loved, so successful, and so relevant to our 21st Century lives.

Oh, and if you visit Amsterdam next month (insert weed jokes here) you can also catch on the Nederlandse Opera's stage that big tall order of sexy, Luca Pisaroni, reprising his role as Figaro.

Ne' Lieti Calici: Barrett Wissman's Pay-For-PlayWine Scheme

The Barrett Wissman/IMG scandal becomes increasingly more and more lollersome, reports the WSJ:

For Barrett Wissman, life as an admitted felon is looking better by the day.

Yesterday, Deal Journal detailed the hedge fund manager’s recent sojourn to the Tuscan Festival Del Sole, an annual musical festival that he co-founded with his wife. Wissman has pleaded guilty for his role in an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving the New York state pension fund and has agreed to cooperate as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s key witness in the case. The former chairman of IMG Artists, which represents classical musicians, Wissman also agreed to pay a $12 million penalty.

It seems that in addition to enjoying the beautiful classical music and hobnobbing with actors like Anthony Hopkins at the festival, Wissman also found time to enjoy plenty of fine Italian wine.

Opera Chic Leaves Munich; Gheorghiu & Licitra Follow

The world of opera singers is small. Sudden cancellations make it even smaller.

Both Angela Gheorghiu (Traviata) and Salvatore Licitra (Aida) have pulled out of their Bayerische Staatsoper commitments -- right after singing for Opera Chic. The official motive: "Health reasons".

Angela will be replaced by Anja Harteros; Totò by Stuart Neill (the American dude who replaced Giuseppe Filianoti after he got fired the day before the season opener of la Scala, last Dec. 7, Don Carlo). That Don Carlo was also conducted by Daniele Gatti, who conducts Munich's Aida.

Stephen Hough Will Fine You Two Grand

Born-again pianist Stephen Hough hates your cell phone, and hates you, too.

I don't mind the odd rasp of a cough, or rustle of a programme; but a jingle from the depths of someone's pocket or pocket-book is about as annoying as anything can be. Perhaps an instant fine of $2,000 would be the incentive needed for people simply to check and make sure the wretched things are switched off

via Tim Smith

Jerry Springer, Opera Fan

Jerry loves the opera -- in so many ways:

Another thing my wife and I like doing is going to the opera and two years ago we went to the Puccini Festival (www.puccinifestival.it) in Torre del Lago, near Pisa. That was just wonderful.

I mean, imagine Trovatore staged at the Jerry Springer show. Or Elektra.

Carl Maria von Weber According To Viktor & Rolf (and Bob Wilson, Too)

More after the jump.

Bernard Madoff's Latest Victim: Scholarships For Musicians

Among the victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, we now learn from The New York Times, via Tim Smith, there's also the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, that has awarded in the past scholarships to musicians such as Itzhak Perlman, Yefim Bronfman, Pinchas Zukerman and Daniel Barenboim. The Foundation now has to severely cut back on those precious scholarships.

After all, Madoff stole from sick children, Holocaust survivors, hospitals, retirees -- he stole from Elie Wiesel. It only makes sense that he would also steal from musicians.

The Arts Council of England: Throw Your Kids Into A Boiling Vat Of Great Music

Even a staunch Anglophile like Opera Chic could not avoid to shudder a little this morning reading how Liz Forgan, chairwoman of Arts Council England (the body that dispenses public money to the arts in the UK), keynote speaker at the Royal Philharmonic Awards, thinks music should be taught in schools.

I mean, the UK historically made caning in public schools an impressively kinky part of their otherwise splendid educational system, but to add aural abuse to the list of indignities those scared schoolchildren have to suffer at school seems to be a bit much. 

In short: How do you teach children how to love classical music? Via the always awesome (even when we disagree, which is not very often) Charlotte Higgins, says Ms. Forgan, who is after all not some random lunatic in Hyde Park but a very powerful person in the British arts:

"Give them Birtwistle, Buxtehude, Ligeti, Ockeghem and Beethoven as soon as possible. Give them the best of contemporary music of all sorts. Don't apologise."

"Throwing children alive into a boiling vat of great music does them no harm at all"

Opera Chic's advice for your children: piano (or some other instrument) lessons are generally fun, when appreciated: and let them sort out of your music collection the stuff they like (if indeed they do like it). Otherwise, your kids are better off watching the Muppets -- Beethoven was a fan of theirs, after all.

 

Cologne's "Delilah" Is So Bad Even The Chorus Is Boycotting It

Regisseur Tilman Knabe's staging of Saint-Saens "Samson And Delilah" -- that hasn't even opened yet -- seems to be a pretty nasty piece of work. There's some seriously bad mojo in Cologne surrounding the secks & violence tone of the production, so bad that, reports Deutsche Welle:

"Twenty-eight of the 64 chorus singers and three of the leading voices have stopped coming to rehearsals, according to opera spokesman, Johannes Wunderlich."

 

"Israeli mezzo soprano Dalia Schaechter, who plays the lead role of Delilah, and Samuel Youn, as the high priest, have reportedly thrown in the towel, as has Ulrich Hielscher, who plays the part of the old Jew."

 

"Director Tilman Knabe has set his production of Camille Saint-Saen's Samson and Delilah in the modern-day Middle East, instead of biblical Palestine. The staging includes a bloody machinegun battle and a gang rape".

Whether or not this protest will be able to sink the show remains to be seen -- opening on May 2nd. Maybe.

Below, an image from Knabe's Turandot, another quite unorthodox production. Uncensored, Not Safe For Work (NSFW) version after the jump...

Pink Flamingos, The Opera :-(

John Waters, opera man:

But his love of campy sex and tabloid mayhem is married with an intense appreciation for literature, history and high art. It makes perfect sense that he's currently trying to turn "Pink Flamingos" into an opera.

It's like the perfect storm of gayness.

Your Tax Dollars @Work: Art Is Wasteful And Non-Stimulative, Senate Says

The US Senate has voted on an amendment to the economic recovery bill with a massive 73-24 majority. The amendment will make sure (bold italics are Opera Chic's) that

None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project.

Three quarters of the Senate -- a legislative body that has as of late voted to bail out AIG with $85 billion, Bank of America and Citibank with $48 billion each, not to mention six years worth of votes in favor of the Iraq war expenditures -- think that arts are "wasteful" and/or "non-stimulative" (or better yet, in the quite Baudrillardian spelling invented by the Library of Congress, "non-simulative").

To see how your Senator voted, click here.

The Wall Street Journal Is Out Of Fashion

Now, people who read the Wall Street Journal for the fashion coverage are more rare than those who actually read Playboy for the book reviews (Opera Chic usually hides her copy of the Journal inside a Playboy magazine -- there are limits to the embarrassment one can be subjected to) but the WSJ fashion blogs rock; nevertheless, the decision to fire more or less the entire fashion staff -- days before Fashion Week -- sounds, if not downright douchy, certainly lame. On the other hand, it's not only the arts coverage that's being ruthlessly eradicated from the US print media, so at least classical music lovers shouldn't take the cuts as personally as they usually do -- the cuts look increasingly more like carpet bombing than precision strikes, unfortunately.

Anyway, pewp to the Journal for this.

Che Gelida Manina: ENO Postpones Miller's Bohème Premiere In Snowed Out London

Lebrecht sez:

"For the first time I can remember, an opera premiere in London has been cancelled by severe weather. The snow is six inches thick on the ground and Jonathan Miller's keenly awaited return to the Coliseum will have to be awaited until Wednesday, as English National Opera cannot guarantee getting its employees - let alone the audience - safely home to bed.

ENO page here.

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From the Indy's YouTube channel, Miller on the risks of burying Bohéme under too much schmaltz:

John Williams Has A Posse (Mozart Is, Like, Obsolete)