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).»
Say what you will about her voice, I’m surprised that Nagano suggested singing lessons per se. (Also surprised that Angelil would admit such a thing.) A master class with someone like Scotto makes sense, however, as a matter of style. As far as the merits of the project, I suppose she makes as much sense as Faye Dunaway or Fanny Ardant (which is to say, not much.) Perhaps she and Renee could get together for a remake of “Outrageous Fortune.”
Orlatromba… a little help with the French please… or anyone…
La Ceica… if your willing to put longer pauses in your next contest, could you ‘je vous en prie’ include an English translation for us lame-brains???
(I understand je vous en prie can be used “If you want something very much, and don’t mind a bit of groveling”)
I think Celine would be better suited to portray Charlie Callas.
MYB: Thank you for making me pee my pants on a Monday morning.
On behalf of everyone in Quebec, I wish to offer my sincerest apologies. I cover my head in shame.
Translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fparterre.com%2F%3Fp%3D1292&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=fr&tl=en
ouch, that’s a slap in the face of her NY voice teacher (who has some MET opera clients)…
Would not Marcia Gay Harden be the greatest Maria Callas?
Scazza – that Google translation is hilarious, as machine translations often are. “Moi, unpretentious, I can do everything.”
On completely unrelated news: Lance Bass was just casted as one of the dancers in Dancing With the Stars. Can we start a movement to partner him with Johnathan, or Max?
as much as I hate the idea, Celine and Callas do resemble each other. Remember the makeup book in which Celine was photographed as Callas? I thought it was a good resemblance.
Now, the singing and the acting are topics better left to another discussion.
Lance Bass would make a great Giuseppe Di Stefano opposite Celine’s Maria.
Except for the fact that di Stefano and Maria did the nasty and Lance would rather be dead than going anywhere near Celine’s fupa.
Considering how well he knew her I have still not forgiven Zeffirelli for making that travesty “Callas Forever”. He is one of the last people alive who worked with her who could have told the real story. That said, if this movie gets made with Celine Dion it will be an atrocity. ANY movie made about Callas MUST use original recordings. Just the idea that Celine or anyone would attempt to sing as Callas makes me shudder. That voice, whether one likes it or not, is absolutely INIMITABLE – and anyone who attempts to recreate it is doing the ultimate disservice to Callas.
The people producing this would be wise to cast someone like Cate Blanchet who is a true dramatic movie actress, use the original recordings, consult with the few living artists, conductors, and directors who knew Maria, and shoot the damn thing entirely on location in Italy and France. THAT is a movie I would be excited about.
thanks for that translation… i figured it was probably a good one… thats how she talks… cant stand it:
Oh yes, Renee and i are in love and we will have babies because we are in love and when you are in love, you make babies with the one you are in love with to show the world how much you love each other…
LS, you should be a producer!
I’m not much of a fan of current cinema, and the biopic is probably my least favorite genre today (oh, for the day’s when we had Shearer and Garson!), so I am already biased. But even if Cate Blanchett managed to look like Callas, understand her psyche, mime each gesture to perfection, pin down MC’s puzzling speaking voice (sometimes Parisian grande dame, sometimes Texas housewife), lipsynch like nobody’s business and swallow a frickin’ tapeworm she still would be inadequate. Any actress would. I just don’t think anyone could capture the elusive something that is Callas.
Not to mention that MC’s life, in dramatic terms, would come off as something cheesy and Lifetime-ish.
A film about her early pre-Italy years might be compelling, but it also might be too much like “Gypsy.”
BTW, I know that Zeffirelli directed Callas in at least four productions and he always makes it sound as though they were
BFFs. (Would a real friend have made that awful movie?)
Did Callas ever say much publicly about their relationship.
“Pavarotti, I think, do not read music him neither” is my new favorite sentence.
Considering that opera i a VERY Small niche market in the music industry, your lucky to be getting such a MAJOR star to portray Callas, a woman who defiantly “stayed too long at the fair”.
I think Céline Dion look a lot like the Young Maria Callas. If she can act she’ll be perfect. As for the singing…that’s what dubbing is for!
There’s something pleasantly ironic about the notion of Scotto coaching someone to sing like Callas.
“Why she do this to me?”
MYB–You are so right. No actress can capture Callas’s magic–and no singer, either. (If any could, we would certainly know who it is!)
I remember being dumbfounded by McNally’s trashy “Master Class.” For all of Zoe Caldwell’s skill, I simply didn’t recognize Callas in her–it could have been a play about any famous woman with a scandalous love life. Then at one point, while Caldwell was blathering away about Ari and Jackie, they started to play a Callas recording as underscoring and I thought “Oh there she is!” It made me want Caldwell to shut up and let us listen to the record.
Did someone mention Norma Shearer as a good example of an actress – let alone in a bip-pic. Did you see her Marie Antoinette or Greer Garson’s Elizabeth in Pride & Prejudice?
I think the first act of McNally’s “Lisbon Traviata” gave us more Callas than we’ll ever see again – and she was not even a character in the play.
Maybe dramatizations of her life should always have her offstage or offscreen – like Keikobad or Paul Bunyon.
Norma was wonderful as Marie Antoinette! I’ll never forget the look in her eyes at the end – first one eye… then the other…
MYB: My favorite line (done in a rapid breathy ’30s ingenue indeterminate accent) “Oh Mama, How happay I shall be when I am the queen of frAHnce”. Wasn’t she like 40 trying to play a 14 year old at that time?
Well Dion did do the end theme song for Titanic,but didn’t actually appear in it..or ‘go down with it’. Here’s her big second chance to be top of the flops. A new cinematic counterpart for Pavarotti’s Yes, Georgio – that other bit of cultured film tripe – that also sunk without a trace. Who’s willing to produce the project as a ‘international tax loss benefit’ scheme? I can hear it all now “The fraud will go on….and on ….and on”
The photo above, featuring Celine’s New New Face, makes her look like she’s made of some sort of high gloss wax. Or else she was sprayed with clear lacquer after she struck her pose.
I wish she would wear more clothes. You so often see her in things like this above (Je suis sexy!), but she’s too scrawny for it to really work the way she thinks it does.
Melot’s Younger Brother, stop making us think that you are some silly besotted demented oldie watching Norma Shearer on a wet rainy afternoon,on TV in an old peoples’ home. Sipping tea and having a bad habit of dropping your dipped soggy biscuits all over yourself. Nurse will come along, take you by the ear and make you go to the washroom to clean up before the evening meal. She hears you protest: ” …but Norma was my true sweetheart, before Jeanette Mac Donald but after Clara Bow”
Melot’s Younger Brother snarled:
Norma was wonderful as Marie Antoinette! I’ll never forget the look in her eyes at the end – first one eye… then the other…
I thought that Fanny Ardant did a good job as Callas and she certainly resembled her nicely. The film itself made me feel ashamed to watch it.
Sorry, High C’s… I was not checking the site and didn’t see your request for a translation… I did find what they said/wrote pretty hilarious, though! (I am talking about Céline and hubby.)
I would have to agree 100% with Little Stevie about the sheer idiocy of a Callas film made by people who know probably very little about her. (And yes, the fact that someone like Zeffirelli made such a mockery of someone he owed so much to is still astounding to me today…)
At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I just think all there is to know about Callas is in her recordings, the photos, the precious few films we have of her and our imagination for the (too many) roles for which we don’t have recordings of her. Ah, her Roberto Devereux Elisabetta! Her Ermione! I can even imagine her “Imperatrice” circa 1953 at La Scala in “La Donna Senz’Ombra” opposite Simionato (la moglie di Barak), Stignani (Nutrice), Franco Corelli (Imperatore) and Ettore Bastianini (Barak) with de Sabata conducting!
But please, no more Callas movies unless you are a first-rate film director/opera queen and know what you’re talking about…
Whoa…that pic of Celine reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode, when the department store Maniquins come to life , for a month (this pic would be while she was still a store dummy…..)
Kashania
So agree about Fanny Ardant, a very fine actress (who must have found job opportunities thin on the ground after this) and your general opinion of that film which thankfully went bmore or less straight to video. Mr Irons was definitely going through male menopause in that one though the Escamillo was quite fetching. Zefirelli should have left the scene after Tea with Mussolini. Now there’s an opera libretto in the making. Could Famous Quickly and La Cieca be cajoled into the Dench and Maggie Smith roles with suitable transposition?
Orlatromba: Ah! The Callas of the imagination!
If only she’d been born 45 years later and was appearing right now in some regie production of Donizetti’s Imelda de’ Lambertazzi!
Sorry the second f in Zeffirelli eluded me earlier. Do believe in table manners. And the second f if at all possible
Celine Dion?
Ew…
im with brooklynpunk… i remember that episode… and the pic also calls to mind the Fembots, that were just mentioned under another thread… and she ought to wear more clothes… jatm’s right…
I just see skin and bones. Not much in the way of healthy flesh. And that skin looks as if it has been buffed with turtle wax.
Yes but who’s going to play the fat Callas?
Millo?
Callas is overrated, Celine Dion’s just fine by me to play her, I probably won’t watch it anyway.
I think George Lucas has the right idea. Just animate the new Callas movie — problem solved!
Callas is overrated?
if the composers had heard her sing their music and become their characters…well, they’d have shit themselves in Awe.
Callas is overrated
Ruh roh, RareGems195, be prepared to be torn to shreds for that. [flees thread before it turns in to Elektra]
Well, if Celine resembles Charlie Callas, perhaps Frank Gorshin should have played Onassis, with Miley Cyrus as Jackie O.
The perfect person to play Callas, IMHO, would be Sylvia Sass. She could (or rather, could have a while ago) sing for herself, and still resemble Callas, and she certainly resembles her physically.
Think Beethoven might have had a job hearing her Ah perfido which is quite spine-curdling – but then it is an early work so give him the benefit of the doubt. Did she ever contemplate any role in Elektra?
Joy of joys
Sylvia Sass
Call her up at once
Miley Cyrus is already inked in to portray Tebaldi.
“Ruh roh, RareGems195, be prepared to be torn to shreds for that.:
I think that RareGems (aka TKLogan) is looking for that exact kind of attention.
RE: Robert Devereux. Callas managed to perform a lot of roles during her relatively brief prime so I can’t complain but the biggest missed opportunity for me is her Elisabetta. The role was written for her voice. Much as I love Sills, Gencer and Caballe in the role, I’d kill to hear what Callas would have done with it (especially the final scene).
OMG, Callas would have ripped everyone on stage with her to shreds. She would have been perfect.
I’m watching “Notorious” on TCM right now. I still hate the idea of a a biopic, but Ingrid Bergman could have played her.
Who besides us would rent a Callas movie? Surely, it will not play in theaters.
Hello friends. it is Celine Dion,and i want to go shop but i forget how to shop to make sure la Cieca get her cut cuz i love La Cieca and want to have her get her cut when i go shop. I want to shop to get music to listen to i love and i love La Cieca ad want to have her babies and get her her cut of what i shop for.
Could someone refresh my memory on how to go about this?
Ever since that unbelievably grossly, overdone, tasteless, artless wedding head-dress that she wore(when she married her Grandfather) I haven’t been able to get the image out of my mind whenever I hear her name.
In the history of mankind- I don’t think this headgear will ever be beaten in the tasteless stakes – it was an all time shocker!
Could Famous Quickly and La Cieca be cajoled into the Dench
“and Maggie Smith roles with suitable transposition?”
I have never transpasosed single note I sang!
Did I imagine it or wasn’t Catherine Zeta Jones and her ummm ‘grandfather’ Michael Douglas going to make a film about Callas and Onassis starring themselves?
If you ask me CZJ and Dion are as bad as each other, but as for the latter – when ever I hear her name the first thing that pops into my head is the song from the South Park movie –
BLAME CANADA!
Sorry Canada – I know shes not your fault.
As per usual – It’s Eurovisions!!!
Catherine Zeta Jones actually sang in an opera – an ‘American opera’, Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, in which she danced and bellowed the role of lusty Mae McGann for the ‘Moon faced, starry eyed’ number at English National Opera in 1989.
I adore Fanny Ardant, rescuer of several bad films including Swann in Love and Ridicule, but wouldn’t go to another Zeffirelli f***up so missed her as Maria.
Maybe Agnes Baltsa could have a second career, Katya-like, and play her?
Celine Dion and Renata Scotto is a match made in Central Casting Heaven. The good they can do for each other, in so many ways, is unimaginable.
Scaramuccio – I too am a Fanny fan (and anti- Franco), but how can you say Ridicule was a bad film? And Swann in Love wasn’t bad, considering it was trying to adapt the unadaptable.
The fabulous Fanny is at her most visually bewitching in Resnais’ La vie est un roman and magnificent in Le colonel Chabert. However, the film of hers that I adored most when I saw it – 25 years ago! – was Andre Delvaux’s Benvenuta. It appears to have sunk without trace since, though a DVD was, I believe, available in Italy at one point.
I love playing fantasy-Callas casting. That Frau ohne Schatten proposal above sounds fabulous. I always wish she had done Jenufa, or possibly Emila Marty. I think she’d have been fantastic as Tatyana or Liza in Onegin and Pique Dame respectively.
“if the composers had heard her sing their music and become their characters…well, they’d have shit themselves in Awe.”
lol they’d shit themselves all right. If only the Big Ugly voice had sung what was written down in the score, that would help. She’d be their last choice, believe me. They’d just as soon pick Celine.
Are they going to concentrate on the early years.
Neither Callas or Dion were much of a looker in the early years. She may feel a kind of empathy. How Celine managed to sing around those tombstones in her mouth is at the very least, some sort of achievement.
The ending may be a little downbeat for her. Perhaps a bit of judicious re-writing of the story might be in order. Callas reaches the dizzy heights of her career, has a multi-millionaire boyf and has some lovely children, re-affirming the total wonderfulness of Callas/Dion.
“EEF you have to cut, you have to cut GLAUCE’S aria– Not. Mine.”
Maybe Miley Cyrus can play the young Scotto to Celine’s Callas.
TG, I called it bad because I hated it, which maybe isn’t good enough. And Swann… starred the troll-like Ornella Muti, which was bad casting for a start.
But thank you, I will look out two of the films you mention (I’ve seen Colonel Chabert). On which tack, I am ENORMOUSLY grateful to La Cieca’s site for drawing my attention to The Music Man via Hermione’s ‘Ball-zac!’ filth. What a clever, witty film! How I adore Shirley Jones! It’s time for Carousel again (which I hear is being remade with the gorgeous Hugh Jackman, whom we were lucky enough to get by the short and Curleys in the National Theatre Oklahoma). Anyone know who’s playing Julie?
Scaramuccio – Did you know that The Music Man is on at the Chichester Festival Theatre until August 30? And it so happens that coming to the theatre’s studio space next month is …
Artisto
A new play by Martin Sherman
Based on material from Nemesis by Peter Evans
With Robert Lindsay
Aristo is the story of the last years in the life of Aristotle Onassis, and of his complex and interwoven relationships with Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas, and his son Alexandros. Based in part on Peter Evans’ book Nemesis, Aristo is an explosive account of how those in positions of enormous power and wealth often live lives detached from the realities and moral codes of everyday existence
I did, TG, and I hear excellent reports about it. I blithely assumed it would transfer to London – maybe I was wrong in that assumption, but too late for me to catch it now.
Robert Lindsay as AO – now there’s an interesting thought. He’s a great actor, blisteringly funny and tragic in The Entertainer.
First, Dion plays Callas, and then Paris Hilton will take on Grace Kelly. O tempora, o mores…
The photograph looks like a still from “Death becomes her”. Can she act? Will she lip synch? Will anyone go to see this obvious pile of crap? Does anyone care?
Much underrated movie, that (Death Becomes Her): withstands a second viewing. People forget that Meryl did Funny long before Mamma Mia (which by all accounts AIN’T funny, though I guess I’d better go see for myself).
But yes, this picture’s scary. I join with another in thanking La Cieca for that one of Rufus.
On which vaguely interconnected note, I wouldn’t mind at all if Gwyneth Paltrow did Grace Kelly. She comes very close to her style in The Talented Mr Ripley (oh so cool, the scene in St Mark’s where she sweeps in wearing an animal skin and n/ clocks Matt D at Florian’s). But I guess she’d need a great director like the late, lamented Minghella (well, let’s forgive him the Butterfly).
Then there was that fellow years ago, trying to get a film made on Mario Lanza. Script was already complete. I saw a program on it. He had Lanza at the end of the film, singing in some Italian opera house and Lucky Luciano up in a box throwing coins or a torn up programme to signal ‘mafia curtains’ for Lanza!
Likewise, with Callas -her demise is disputed. Some say a simple heart attack. Yet others claim she was taken to hospital after being filled up on presumably, coffee – caffiene! Certianly not the stuff for a heart attack treatment.
Scaramuccio: the best scene in Death Becomes Her is Meryl Steep doing that slick send up Broadway number in a supposed show called “Sweet Bird” -a drivative of Tennesse Williams ‘Sweet Bird of Youth’. The actual number and its presentation would put many of today’s shows in the shade.
Harry, I thought it had been well documented that Callas died at home from something I cannot spell involving her lungs, possibly involving them filling with blood, and probably aggravated by the numerous pills she was taking.
There is also Zeffi’s theory that Callas was murdered by Vasso Devetzi who regularly fed her illegally-gotten sleeping and diet pills that would eventually kill her. It was Devetzi who stopped an autoposy and had her body cremated (not approved of for those in the Orthodox faith).
Jeepers, creepers. The next thing will be Charlotte Church as Melba in a remake of “Evensong”
Thackeray Gnomey – especially for you :
http://cgi.ebay.com.my/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220273730406
I can imagine it now: Tu che le vanita while Celine thumps her chest for the high notes…
Heaven preserve us.
Thank you, manou. I just ordered it from a gentleman in Siracusa, Sicily!
TG – Spero che ci siano dei sottotitoli…
The chest thumping could be the highlight of the film. I can only imagine where should would insert the chest thumps in various arias. Certainly, any reference to love would qualify (”M’ami – thump – Alfredo”). It’ll be fascinating to see if she can incorporate the chest thump into bel canto works. Like which verse of “Casta diva” would be best? How about the cavatina-cabaletta format — one in each section? And the mind reels at the incorporation of the chest thump into mad scenes. In fact, the chest thump is reason enough to make this film!
Who is being considered for the role of Mario DM in this cinerama spectacle? And how are they going to tackle the” MC in Athens in Hitlertime?”
Well, who is going to get the role of that poor process server who got the full Maria treatment?
Celine can definitly act for having seen her in a TV dramatic series. As for singing, it could be surprising as she’s very versatile with her voice. But anyway the singing would have to be very good to be credible. In any case in my opinion it would be much more interesting than having the part played by an actress being dubbed.
According to the IMBd database, Billy Ray Cyrus is to portray as Mario Del Monaco.
No – Cate Blanchet is down to play Onassis.
Noo!!! Celine couldn’t possibly understand or imagine the life Maria Callas had, let a lone try and portray it. Celine is as phony as it gets and Maria was nothing if not honest. I’ve heard many people try to sing with the musicality, the beauty and the passion of Maria Callas and they’ve only come close. I’ve also heard Celine sing opera. She does not know what she’s doing and it would take her another lifetime to figure out how to sing, and therefore be, like Maria.
Oh dear, now we have to cast the small roles in the movie!!! The Chicago process server could become an amazing cameo for Anthony Hopkins. Elsa Maxwell would have to be that guy from Little Britain whose name escapes me. Celine’s hubby would have to play Meneghini (just to add a touch of reality to the whole affair). I can see Vince Vaughn as a jokey Di Stefano and Renata Tebaldi could be another nice cameo for Meryl Streep (who could try to sing her part, too!)… This would then turn into one of those films for which one used to say “Who do you have to sleep with in order to NOT be in this movie?”…
Anyone else care to cast this? I bet you would all come up with even better/funnier choices than mine!
At the risk of betraying a little more knowledge than I perhaps should on a forum such as this, one of the undoubted highlights of Celine’s ‘Let’s Talk About Love (While We Thump Our Chests)’ album is a duet with Big Lucy entitled ‘I Hate You Then I Love You’ (or on Luciano’s behalf ‘I Haiyte-a You Then Iya Lahve-a You’) which is one of my failsafe mood-lighteners for when I need a really good laugh.
But my point is that I would have thought that somewhere during the recording process Celine would therefore have discovered already that Pavarotti didn’t read music. Or perhaps she is just larding on the false modesty….
And my guess is also that a properly trained Celine would be a soprano and not a mezzo (she has an ease in head voice when not belting that suggests so) but it ain’t going to be a decently-sized soprano – she would probably be a Gheorghiu ‘I’m only going to use 50% of my voice whenever I get above a G’ kind of girl….
O SCARPIA! AVANTI A DION!!!!
“Anyone else care to cast this?”
John Travolta as Joan Sutherland (recycling his Hairspray get-up)
David Hyde-Pierce as Zeffirelli
Nicolette Sheridan as Jackie Callas
Tyra as Leontyne
I agree that if Dion trained her voice operatically, she’d probably be a soprano. With the exception of those melisma riffs, her genre of music doesn’t call for alot of head voice.
What I don’t understand (and clearly I’m not alone) is why Celine would actually have to sing in this film? Even a real opera singer is not going to successfully emulate Maria’s singing. They should stick with dubbing. Hearing Maria’s recordings might end up being the only good thing about the film (aside from the chest-thumping of course).
Since Celine’s acting chops are not really tested, let’s surround her with some of the best Hollywood has to offer:
Evangelia Callas – Judi Dench
Jackie Callas – Natalie Portman
Aristotle Onassis – Benicio del Toro
Giovanni Battista Meneghini – Philip Seymour Hoffman
Jacqueline Kennedy – Kate Winslet
Elvira de Hidalgo – Helen Mirren
Tullio Serafin – Ben Kingsley
Young Renata Scotto – Ellen Page
Renata Tebaldi – Marion Cotillard
Giuseppe Di Stefano – Joaquin Phoenix
Sir Rudolf Bing – Ralph Fiennes
Franco Zeffirelli – Roberto Benigni
Luchino Visconti – Ian McKellen
Carlo Maria Giulini – Daniel Day-Lewis
Leonard Bernstein – Adrien Brody
Franco Corelli – Johnny Depp
Tito Gobbi – Javier Bardem
Giulietta Simionato – Salma Hayek
Herbert Von Karajan – Viggo Mortensen
Walter Legge – Simon Cowell
Elizabeth Schwartzkopf – Amy Adams
John Ardoin – Paul Giamatti
and Tom Cruise as the Tapeworm
Of course, all singing will be dubbed except for Johnny Depp, Joaquin Phoenix, Marion Cotillard and Amy Adams, who as you already know, are established singers.
Miss Ping # 67: hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Melot’s Younger Brother, you had me in stitches with your cast! Bravissimo!
Thank you, rlatromba.
But perhaps I should change it.
How about Richard Gere as the Tapeworm?
Dazzling, wicked, MYB, a feast for the imagination.
In other diva news:
“ARTS, BRIEFLY
Fleming and Floyd Receive Swedish Award
Compiled by Julie Bloom
The American soprano Renée Fleming and the British rock group Pink Floyd received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden on Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reported. The awards were bestowed by Carl XVI Gustaf, the King of Sweden, in Stockholm. The winners received about $156,000 each. Ms. Fleming, right, was honored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, “in recognition of her sublime unparalleled voice and unique stylistic versatility.†Nick Mason and Roger Waters accepted the award on behalf of Pink Floyd, selected “for their monumental contribution over the decades to the fusion of art and music in the development of popular culture.†The Polar Music Prize was founded in 1989 by Stig Anderson, the publisher, lyricist and manager of the Swedish pop group Abba. The prize has been awarded since 1992. Last year it was shared by the composer Steve Reich and the jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins?
Why does Renee need this money? Or recognition? It seems perverse to reward people for being famous and rich…
Ok now I really want to hear Dion sing soprano. All the rest I think is speculation… Considering the fact that nobody can portray Maria Callas, while singing, I do not agree. Callas did have the most peculiar voice, and I think this is why it should be possible for someone with a peculiar voice to play her character. I dont know if it makes sense to you, but for instance, somebody said agnes baltsa (forgive me if i spell that wrong) to play her and thats typically wrong because can she go as far as callas in some of her diphtongues (if that word exists in english) ? Of course she has the right register and is an incredible opera singer but can she do a real french held “IN” which sounds horrendous to the hear, but is the correct vowel to do in “train” in les tringles des sistres ? I say screw the original recording. I want an actress and a singer actress to play the character, and play the voice. Of course the character will not be a copy of who was callas exactly, you will still see a bit of the actress in it. And of course the voice will not be callas’ but she could play the peculiarity, even if in the end it’s not exactly the same.
In a word give me a honest performance with a freak unconcerned of usual beauty cannon (english ?) voice, with the appropriate rigor and dramatic expression research and I will be pleased.
that comment was way too long.
La Cieca – I have a treasure here, sent two days after the divine Nicola Kirsch won our car-crash-Tv programme ‘Stars in their Eyes’ ‘as’ Maria Callas. The public bought it – even though the Paul McCartney- and Whitney Houston-alikes were a thousand times better, and out came the CD. The four more this lady was contracted for don’t seem to have materialised.
Mind you, I played Nicola’s ‘Casta Diva’ alongside Maria’s to two opera-illiterate friends and asked them which they preferred – and they chose the vaseline-lensed, utterly spineless Kirsch. Yer punters really do want to hear Italian opera treated as a words-don’t-matter, brain-in-bucket Ocean of Tranquillity, hence the success (?) of the Opera Babes and their ilk.
Scaramuccio, you must forward a link to lacieca@parterre.com.
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