a southern gal in the north

Thursday it hit 67 degrees in the NYC metro area – today it dipped to the 20s with wind chills int he teens.  The snow and ice ground cover had FINALLY melted over the last four days of warmer temperatures.

* sigh *

3 pm today

630 pm today 

and its still coming down!

But at least my firend the cardinal is happy!

Thursday it hit 67 degrees in the NYC metro area – today it dipped to the 20s with wind chills int he teens.  The snow and ice ground cover had FINALLY melted over the last four days of warmer temperatures.

* sigh *

That photo is at 630 pm today   –  and precipitaion of some sort is still coming down!  There was NO snow on the ground last night – just a lot of rain as I drove home from the HELENA opening night.  I awoke around 6 and saw the snow falling in big huge clumps – that soft wet snow – but now its a sleeting snow mix and its supposed to turn back to snow by the morning – we may have up to 8 inches by the midday!  Of course there is about that much in my little backyard now!

But at least my firend the cardinal is happy!   He loves to hang out in the backyard – sometimes his mate joins him and sometimes the male from the other pair does too but lately I have been seeing him alone at the feeder or just perched around the back of the yard   Especially during the storm when the squirrels are NOWHERE to be seen.

Its been a very busy week – Starting Sunday with THE VERTICAL HOUR’s last performance (briefly Nighy was great and Moore was find) and then a Wed matinee of JOURNEY’S END (devastatingly heart and gut wrenching and fabulously acted by a great ensemble – I am a little biased as a friend is in the cast) and then the Prima of HELENA at the MET Thursday night. 

In between all of that was a trip in and back to the city on Tuesday to take a relative to Penn Station and lots of practicing and a lesson and a haircut at a new place (always an ORDEAL for us long haired gals but even more so the first time with a new stylist) and chores (cats’ litter boxes don’t clean themselves – or maybe they do?) and a meeting with a financial adviser (although a good thing still stressful)..

Add to that lots of driving back and forth and figuring out the most convenient parking lot for the performing arts venue or restaurant (visiting relative prefers the car to the train and pays the parking fees so its fine by me – but its been a lot of driving intoi and around the city for this one-month-old car owner).

So this morning when the snow was falling so heavily and kept it up, I was glad of an excuse to hole up – for some down time – a little LAWnORDER watching (love that dearly departed Jerry Orbach) and lots of practicing (Bach, Chopin and a new Beethoven sonata – yum!) and catching up on my blog reading,  And now for a little knitting to round the day off and the taped pilot of RAINES (the new Goldblum show – can’t tell from the ads whether its going to be any good or not).

From NY Times

Music Review | ‘Die Ägyptische Helena’
That Face of Beauty, the Chaos It Creates
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

If a concert pianist wants to champion an overlooked work, all he needs to do is to program it on a recital tour. But if a leading soprano wants to perform a challenging role in a little-known opera, she needs an entire opera company to mount the work, with all the money, time and risk such a commitment entails.

When that artist is the dramatic soprano Deborah Voigt, and the company is the Metropolitan Opera, which has hugely benefited from Ms. Voigt’s services since her 1991 debut, it makes sense for the company to accommodate the prima donna.

On Thursday Ms. Voigt fulfilled a long-held desire to sing the title role in Richard Strauss’s seldom-staged 1928 opera, “Die Ägyptische Helena,” at the Met, the company’s first production of the work since seven performances in the 1928-29 season. Reading through commentaries on the opera, it is hard to find an unqualified endorsement of this Strauss work, which followed “Intermezzo” and preceded “Arabella.”

RTR here

 From NEWSDAY

Strauss’ Helen finds a regal voice
BY JUSTIN DAVIDSON
March 17, 2007

For almost 80 years, Richard Strauss’ “The Egyptian Helen” has lurked at the edge of the repertoire like orbiting space debris, unloved and out of mind since its American premiere in 1928. And yet it contains a heroic title role: Helen, whose charms triggered the Trojan War, who barely steps offstage to catch her breath and who opens the second act with one of those blissful, post-coital arias of which Strauss was the absolute master. Helen has just been waiting for the right soprano to come and resurrect her. Now Deborah Voigt has.

The Metropolitan Opera would never have mounted this work but for Voigt, and while she got a vehicle out of the deal (and the tiny Garsington Opera company in England got a shot of Stateside attention for having originated David Fielding’s mod production), the Met’s audience wound up with a bizarrely beautiful opera that survived its exile in style.

From AP

NEW YORK (AP) — It was tough enough in antiquity to be a sorceress, let alone the planet’s most beautiful woman. In the postmodern world, you have to compete for attention with directors, too.

Strauss’ ‘Die Aegyptische Helena’ (‘The Egyptian Helen’) returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday night for the first time since 1928 in a vocal triumph for sopranos Deborah Voigt and Diana Damrau. The surrealistic production by David Fielding, however, was too much to absorb in one sitting, filled with symbolism from start (Poseidon running across the stage with a suitcase) to finish (a Greek temple surrounded by a wedding band on the closing scrim). 

RTR here

From VARIETY

The Met’s 2007 staging of “Die Agyptische Helena” (The Egyptian Helen) is only its second production ever of Richard Strauss’ rare 1928 opera, which disappeared from the repertory the year after the composer wrote it with frequent collaborator-librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. This has always been considered a troubled work, and anyone who has seen a few dozen Broadway tuners can spot the all-too-familiar problem: great music, incomprehensible book. For his Met debut, director-designer David Fielding could hardly have chosen a less felicitous project. Suffice to say that Helen of Troy has claimed yet another victim.

RTR here

Bloomberg (Hoelterhoff)

March 16 (Bloomberg) — I had high hopes for an opera prominently featuring a singing mussel with all-seeing powers. Even in the fanciful land of opera, where dragons, toads and kettles sing and dance, the mussel is unique.

Thank Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal who created what they called Die Alles Wissende Muschel and placed her center stage at the opening of “Egyptian Helen’ (“Die Aegyptische Helena’), a piece first heard in 1928. The mussel sings mezzo and according to the stage directions occupies a tripod in a palace overlooking the ocean. That gives her a good view over some lesser-known events connected to the Trojan War.

Last night, a new production opened at New York’s Metropolitan Opera featuring Deborah Voigt as Helen of Troy, Torsten Kerl and Michael Hendrick as husband Menelaus (both making their Met debuts), Jill Grove as Mussel, Diana Damrau as a sorcerous princess named Aithra, a number of entertaining, wild-haired elves, and several male characters I could not keep straight. Who was the guy in the red suit and matching red head? The problem isn’t the mussel. It’s the rest of the piece.

RTR here

Thursday it hit 67 degrees in the NYC metro area – today it dipped to the 20s with wind chills int he teens.  The snow and ice ground cover had FINALLY melted over the last four days of warmer temperatures.

* sigh *

That photo is at 630 pm today   –  and precipitaion of some sort is still coming down!  There was NO snow on the ground last night – just a lot of rain as I drove home from the HELENA opening night.  I awoke around 6 and saw the snow falling in big huge clumps – that soft wet snow – but now its a sleeting snow mix and its supposed to turn back to snow by the morning – we may have up to 8 inches by the midday!  Of course there is about that much in my little backyard now!

But at least my firend the cardinal is happy!   He loves to hang out in the backyard – sometimes his mate joins him and sometimes the male from the other pair does too but lately I have been seeing him alone at the feeder or just perched around the back of the yard   Especially during the storm when the squirrels are NOWHERE to be seen.

Its been a very busy week – Starting Sunday with THE VERTICAL HOUR’s last performance (briefly Nighy was great and Moore was find) and then a Wed matinee of JOURNEY’S END (devastatingly heart and gut wrenching and fabulously acted by a great ensemble – I am a little biased as a friend is in the cast) and then the Prima of HELENA at the MET Thursday night. 

In between all of that was a trip in and back to the city on Tuesday to take a relative to Penn Station and lots of practicing and a lesson and a haircut at a new place (always an ORDEAL for us long haired gals but even more so the first time with a new stylist) and chores (cats’ litter boxes don’t clean themselves – or maybe they do?) and a meeting with a financial adviser (although a good thing still stressful)..

Add to that lots of driving back and forth and figuring out the most convenient parking lot for the performing arts venue or restaurant (visiting relative prefers the car to the train and pays the parking fees so its fine by me – but its been a lot of driving intoi and around the city for this one-month-old car owner).

So this morning when the snow was falling so heavily and kept it up, I was glad of an excuse to hole up – for some down time – a little LAWnORDER watching (love that dearly departed Jerry Orbach) and lots of practicing (Bach, Chopin and a new Beethoven sonata – yum!) and catching up on my blog reading,  And now for a little knitting to round the day off and the taped pilot of RAINES (the new Goldblum show – can’t tell from the ads whether its going to be any good or not).

The party:
March 22nd – NYC – Represent at The Fashion Institute of Technology in the Haft Auditorium, which is in the C building on 27th street just off of 7th avenue. 6:00pm  

UPDATE: 
Stephanie has created a separate page so you can check it for updates etc.  go HERE

The 2007-2008 Met season, with casting, all in one place. (Though the Met’s own site is very nearly as handy — by far the earliest the company has ever presented repertoire and casting information.) La Cieca would also venture an opinion that next season threatens a rather lower percentage of “why bother” nights, and certainly a steep increase in dementia opportunities.

Parterre Box

Unless there’s something I’ve been holding out on. Maybe I have a secret to tell you.

See Eunny Knit!: Oh, the places we'll go!.

ok one hint:  it has to do with a favorite knitting magazine…

this is one of the pair of cardinals who live in a neighboring tree … they have reappeared since I have been filling the feeder again.

i usually see one of them every morning at some point.  they ignore the squirrels who have learned how to get food by clinging to the branches near the feeder and swiping at the tray!