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).»
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