"Shirtless Teddy Tahu Rhodes Doing Push Ups"

Oh, what more delightful headline can be imagined? Well, perhaps “Florida free-fall sends Giuliani from hero to zero” — that’s great news too. But back to important matters. Did La Cieca mention that for his current stint in Dead Man Walking The Teddster has shaved his head?

Tit for tat

La Cieca has Maury D’annato to thank for (passively) calling her attention to the blog The Opera Tattler, which in recent days has been detailing next season’s plans in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other opera companies of the Transhudson. (The) Opera Tattler also reviews a lot of West Coast opera, and at least so far as La Cieca has read, his (?) blogatorial voice is either very arch or very sincere, either of which is fine by me. (“However, perhaps I should go to Bayreuth in 2009, since I will have the time,” writes the Tattler. How can you not love that?)

More bloggerei (in Italian, but it’s penetrable enough) may be found on the wild ‘n’ wacky site Opéra Bouffe, one of many various efforts by the lovely and apparently tireless Giorgia Meschini. At the moment attention at the Bouffe is split between the”new” Zeffirelli production of Tosca at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and the recent purchase of “le boat slippers dell’Adidas, blu e oro. Con ‘Respect’ stampato sulla linguetta… ‘firmate’ da Missy Elliott.” Bloggy!

Then Opéra Bouffe pointed your doyenne to the utterly necessary Schrott-Locator ™: ¿donde está Erwin?. Even Barihunks doesn’t have this level of detail.

Do you come from a land down under?

Here’s Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Don Giovanni at Opera Australia. La Cieca is, for once, speechless.

UPDATE: Imagine La Cieca’s surprise when she found out there is already video of this production!

Lookism? Again?

Yet another rehash of the great voice vs. waistline debate, this time in the Chicago Daily Herald. Nicole Cabell laments the scarcity of European gyms, while “hunken-tenor” Joseph Kaiser plants his feet firmly on both sides of the fence by declaring, “Essentially if you can be healthy about being healthy, that’s the balance to find because there’s a lot of unhealthy ways to be ‘healthy.’”

Usual suspects Deborah Voigt and Nathan Gunn offer no comment, but “bari-hunk” Mariusz Kwiecien is willing go on the record that he is “not an extremely good looking guy.” (Obviously he didn’t take a good look at this photo accompanying the article!)

Is anyone surprised to hear that the most sensible one of the bunch is the mezzo? “There is no denying the influence of the mass media culture of today on opera, but I think it’s naïve to think that the idea of ‘glamour’ is nothing new to opera,” says Joyce DiDonato. “Look at all the old diva photos from the 1920s and ’30s and you see many svelte, sexy ladies at the height of their powers.”

La Cieca herself couldn’t say it more eloquently, so she’ll turn the program over to radiant Rosa Ponselle. The diva is 39 here, just a year before her retirement from the Met:

Holy….!

More photos of Erwin Schrott and (by the way) a story about the Washington National Opera’s new production of Don Giovanni at PlaybillArts. (A Don G. this hot may well transform DC to AC!)

Too darn Schrott?

Reactions to last night’s Figaro prima? Anyone?

Bendel bonnet, Shakespeare sonnet, Mickey Mouse

Maury D’annato: “Isn’t there probably some sort of unspoken crypto-paleo-musico-semantic rule governing that baritone=top and tenor=bottom?”

Return to Oz

Teddy Tahu Rhodes stars in the first Australian production of Dead Man Walking.

To which La Cieca can only respond, “Nathan Who?”

Flash Mab

The Met’s star-crossed revival of Roméo et Juliette has just hit another bump. Nathan Gunn, announced for Mercutio, has dropped out of the September and October performances of the opera due to illness. Jumping in will be baryhunque Stéphane Degout, who performed Mercutio in this production back in 2005. Gunn is still on the cast list for the December portion of the run.

UPDATE: It just gets worse. Rolando Villazón is now off the Met roster for the season. His Roméo performances (December 8, 12, 15 and 20) have been updated to TBA; the tenor’s Carnegie Hall recital is also canceled.

Gossip elsewhere on the web suggests that Villazón may be off the stage for as long as a year.

Rocky Mountain low

UPDATE: A source at Opera Colorado informs La Cieca that there is in fact no exodus currently in progress from the company’s costume shop. La Cieca apologizes for the confusion.

Earlier, La Cieca reported that her “mile-high informant” whispered that “Colorado Opera’s entire costume department just quit in a huff. Or was fired in a huff.” Apparently La Cieca was either misinformed or else misunderstood the tip she was given.

In any case, we continue with the latest installment of News of the Hard to Believe. America’s Singing Slab Nathan Gunn is quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying, apparently with a straight face, “To be honest, I don’t think that much about how I look.”

No, John von Rhein wasn’t buying it either.