imitation of life
La Cieca has Sylvia Sass will play Maria Callas. Or, to be more specific, Sass will, after a long career built on imitating Callas, literally play the Greek diva when she acts in a French production of the Terrence McNally play Master Class.
Sass’s first recital album was exciting (and great false eyelashes on the cover http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/540/548873.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6823821/a/Classic%2BRecitals%2B-%2BSylvia%2BSass.htm&h=170&w=170&sz=11&hl=en&start=7&um=1&usg=__3j8Ws97HXfNYKoD_TnIyGuZjRmo=&tbnid=CKvVd4tnmsfNfM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=99&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522sylvia%2Bsass%2522%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN), but she lost the plot, didn’t she?
That’s the one I meant. I still treasure the LP cover, larger than life.
She never really focused properly – it was always about the bigger picture. But quite an instrument, to begin with.
Is Francesca Patané any relation to conductor Giuseppe?
saw Sass as Tosc in Rome in the 80s, she reminded me of Carol Burnett imitating Maria Callas
I saw one of Sass in one of her Met Toscas, either the second or the third. It was one of the ones with Cecchele and she was not at all like what I expected from the recordings I heard heard earlier.
Instead of an unruly, but charismatic voice with a lot of presence and temperament, she sounded more even vocally but pretty small scaled. Her voice didn’t have much of a searing quality as I thought it would. Her stage presence was also different from what I expected. Again, it was small scaled. She spent a lot of Act 1 making her earings dangle,
her idea , I guess of being flirty. All in all, my overall reaction was that she was pretty provincial, a throw back to a typical central European soprano from the earlier part of the 20th
century. Again, this was not at all what I expected from her recordings, which have bags of temperament .
Pace Graciella at 42, could our dear doyenne (perhaps through GS herself) put up Sylvia’s wails as she topples off the Castel Sant’Angelo? That does sound unmissable.
And Flashdance? Please give us Flashdance.
Sorry, it was MM2 at 43.
Oh, and it was Mathes too. I MUST pay attention. But can we see it, please?
armerjacquino ranted:
“Um… rewind a minute… FLASHDANCE?
Man, I’ve got to hear that.”
Yes, you do!
What a feeling.
Bein’s believin’.
I can have it all, now I’m dancing for my life.
Take your passion
And make it happen.
Pictures come alive, now I’m dancing through my life.
What a feeling.
Francesca Patanè is Giuseppe Patanè’s daughter.