The Agony and the Ecstasy
. . . though not in that order, actually. Donald Collup presents a brace of his documentary films this weekend featuring two very different divas, Astrid Varnay and Florence Foster Jenkins.
La Varnay (the ecstatic part of the bargain) is profiled in “Never Before,” a two-hour video and audio journey through the early years of the soprano’s career. The film will be screened at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 2 at the Lilli Devereaux Blake School, 45 East 81st Street. Admission is free. More details on “Never Before”
Agony inevitably follows the next day, Friday November 3, when Collup unveils “Florence Foster Jenkins: A World Of Her Own” at the Vocal Record Collectors Society meeting in the Phillips Auditorium at Christ Methodist Church, 520 Park Avenue at East 60th Street. The screening is at 8:00 p.m., preceded by an LP auction at 7:30. Admission is free, but seating is limited. The film includes interviews with such personalities as Marge Champion and Alfred Hubay who attended the celebrated Jenkins Carnegie Hall recital on October 25, 1944, as well as rare photographs from the Gregor Benko collection. Here’s a preview of “A World Of Her Own” –
When the world looks dark…when it seems like this country (the US), the arts, good writing, decent human behavior, the environment, my finances, etc. are all doomed, all I have to do is listen to Florence Foster Jenkins sing “The Musical Snuffbox”, and everything seems better….
In a similar vein, check out THIS:
http://web.syr.edu/~cmfriedm/
and judge for yourself!
Just back from LOC TROVATORE dress rehearsal. Zajick remains a goddess. Radvanovsky is ill so the terrific Erika Strauss sang from the side. Mark Delevan cracked and marked and gave up, so Quinn Kelsey (I think that’s his name) sang Di Luna from the side. Really thrilling watching LOCAA/Ryan folks WAILING on the duet, while the two stars silently strutted around the stage.
The production is a mistep. Not a fiasco, but not really a great Trovatore. The pauses between scenes are endless, as McVickar wants to use every second of intro as story-telling, so we wait in the silence, then we hear the intro once we’re in place so they can “ACT” before the singing begins. Poor Sondra spends almost the whole show kneeling, crouching, or rolling on the floor.
New tenor Walter Fraccaro is pretty terrific. He’s not a star and he doesn’t give off that magnetism, but the vocalism is pretty fancy.
My friend Tom was the old gypsy, and he nailed it. Fun to see him up there with La Zajick.