once more she opens the door
Three-time World’s Best-selling Canadian Female Recording Artist of the Year Céline Dion apparently has not come to her senses in the eight months that have passed since her Las Vegas farewell. As La Cieca warned you last year, the québécoise canary is planning a crossover into the cinema, specifically a biopic in which she, Céline Dion, will portray her idol Maria Callas.Â
Now, don’t panic, filming hasn’t started yet and there’s still plenty of time to get a violent protest movement organized. Still, Dion’s Divina continues in development, according to La Presse:
Céline Dion a chanté pour Kent Nagano à Berlin, en juin. «On voulait voir si Céline est capable de chanter de l’opéra,» explique René Angélil [i.e., Monsieur Dion]. «Si elle doit faire le film sur Maria Callas (avec la productrice Denise Robert), il faut qu’elle y chante, sinon ça ne sera pas intéressant.»
La Dion went into her audition with Nagano imbued with the enormous self-confidence for which she is celebrated. Says Céline:
«Moi, sans prétention, je peux tout faire, mais il faut que je me prépare. Nagano m’a demandé si je connaissais tel ou tel opéra, si je lisais la musique. Par trois fois, j’ai répondu non; ça partait mal, mon affaire! Mais il m’a tout de suite mis à l’aise en me disant que Pavarotti, je pense, ne lisait pas la musique lui non plus.»
Finalement, je lui ai chanté deux extraits de Carmen de Bizet que je connaissais. Je lui ai dit que j’étais mezzo-soprano. Ilm’a répondu: ‘Je ne pense pas. Tout ce que vous venez de chanter, c’est soprano’.»
And Nagano’s reaction to Céline’s Seguidille? Angélil exults, «Après l’avoir écoutée, Kent Nagano lui a suggéré deux choses: des leçons de chant et une classe de maître avec une grande chanteuse d’opéra (la soprano italienne Renata Scotto).»
I thought MC was played by Jane Seymour in that Raul Julia TV movie about Onassis. And there is The Greek Tycoon.
Let Céline do what she wants. She has the money to do it and she’s gonna be slaughtered by everyone, anyway. Eventually her die hard fans will rave about their Céline becoming the new Sarah Brightman and CD’s, tickets and concerts will be sold and money will be made.
The artistic merit won’t be much, but well… who cares? People who actually know real opera will always be regarded as snobs by fans of popular music as long as they don’t acknowledge Andrea Boccelli and Sarah Brightman as legitimate opera singers, so why should we really bother about this?
Of course it is Callas memory that’s on the stake, but her memory has already been stained by such an amount of garbage like the trash they put on the exhibitions of supposedly authentic Callas’ memorabilia that this Céline Dion thing will only be a drop in the ocean of mediocrity.
In the end, it all boils down to the people that have been recognizing and honouring Maria’s true genius by showing her recordings to people who don’t know it and to all those singers after her, younger and older, who look up to her as a model of inspiration for everyone in every Fach. And that is Maria’s true legacy and there’s no pop diva who should have remained the rest of her days singing in the Casino, who can stain that!
I’ve listened to the greatest sopranos of the last fifty years, and I have to say, that while Callas’ is not the most beautiful, it is certainly the most distinctive. Five seconds and you know its her. Because her voice was so different than all others, I don’t see how any film about Callas can use any other voice than hers. At any rate, Callas was an operatic creature who lived in a totally different galaxy, and to try to recreate her magic is fruitless, futile, and a total waste of time and money.
Well, I’ve just been checking some Céline’s fan forums, and apparently her fans are going all excited about this and seriously believe that this woman will actually nail this one out.
On one of the boards, someone posted a clip of Callas singing Isolde’s death scene and a fan repplied that Celine can totally do that because she’s got the vocal prowess for that…
That said, I don’t think I need to add anything else, do I?
LMAO