Broadway/cabaret legend and devoted opera buff Barbara Cook conducted a master class in show tune interpretation at the New York Public Library on February 21. Through the miracle of streaming video, you can now see and hear that extraordinary session.
So, who said this?
“… all opera hovers on the border of parody. No other performing art — except possibly dance — so exposes its practitioners to ridicule. Part of the thrill of opera is pitting sheer volume against human limitations, the constant awareness of the possibility of failure.”
Was it James McCourt? Ethan Mordden? Wayne Koestenbaum? Enzo Bordello?None of the above, actually. Would you believe it’s Anne Midgette, writing in the New York Times? Can it be that the queer opera aesthetic has gone utterly mainstream? Or is it simply that (as La Cieca has so long suspected) Ms. Midgette is a gay man trapped in a woman’s body?
Well, either way, AM has some intriguing points to make about Olive Middleton (recently the subject of a Donald Collup retrospective) and Vera Galupe-Borszkh (whose entire career is a retrospective of sorts). Midgette certainly makes La Cieca eager to delved into the delights of Collup’s Middleton CDs, produced with all the loving care so celebrated a camp diva deserves.
Those geniuses at YouTube just made the service even more friendly, if you can imagine such a thing. Now La Cieca can insert into a web site a player that includes a choice of 50 different opera videos. You’ll want to bookmark the new Unnatural Acts of Video page.
Next up in the spring podcast season, Act 1 of Die Walkuere starring Eileen Farrell, James King and Michael Langdon. Leonard Bernstein leads this sizzling 1968 performance. Unnatural Acts of Opera.
“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.” That’s the advice Judy Garland gave Liza Minnelli, and I think we can all agree that dear Liza took those words to heart with great success. At the moment, though, La Cieca is wondering how Judy would feel about a “first rate version” of her own legendary self, because that’s what the podcast The Entertainment Beat with Frances Gumm offers on a biweekly basis. A self-described “fellow in his 20s” identified only as “Billyboy” channels the Jack Paar/CBS era raconteur Judy, stutter, popped p’s and [...]
Gloria Monty, the TV producer who helmed General Hospital during the golden “Luke and Laura” years, died on April 4. She was 84. Perhaps Ms. Monty’s greatest claim to fame was the stunt casting of a 60-something Joan Crawford as an emergency substitute for daughter Christina Crawford on the soap Secret Storm. As Bob Thomas tells the story in Joan Crawford: A Biography: Joan’s adopted daughter Christina was hospitalized for an abdominal operation and could not perform. Joan contacted Gloria Monty, director and offered to step in for her. Gloria accepted, delighting Fred Silverman, chief of daytime programming at CBS. [...]
Like many of you, La Cieca was a little surprised at the blitz of publicity attendant upon the Met debut of Erika Sunnegardh last Saturday afternoon. A front-page feature in the New York Times, and then, a few days later, a followup article with photographs taken in the soprano’s dressing room. But did you notice — also seen in those photos is a whole phalanx of video and still cameras. In fact, La Cieca has learned that Ms. Sunnegardh’s dressing room was closed off to fans after the performance in order to accomodate the crowd of media covering the story. [...]
At last night’s Don Pasquale prima, Juan Diego Florez was “souffrant” but sang the first two acts, then ceded the role to Barry Banks, who apparently rose to the occasion beautifully. Eduardo Villa sings the final Luisa Miller tonight, theoretically opposite Veronica Villaroel, who did sing the performance on the 29th (was anyone there?) Neil Shicoff is still on the roster for next season’s Peter Grimes, but you can be sure the Met is lining up the most solid covers imaginable. Oh, and if Massimo Giordano sounds a little tired on the occasion of his Met debut (April 5), cut [...]
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