O dieu! que de bijoux!
And people say that in olden days singers used more chest! Ha, says La Cieca. Ha!
(At the Met 125th Anniversary Gala, Angela Gheorghiu models a “replica” of Christine Nilsson‘s Marguerite costume. Nilsson photo from the Met archives; Gheorghiu photo by Ken Howard.)
LOL it was “whole”, but sense of humour is always welcome. Unfortunately, the only hole I see here is “pigeon-hole”.
BTW, I’m just wondering… We’ve started discussion on boobs and ended up on racism. You can’t deny it’s intriguing.
How about discussing on leontyne΄s boobs? Then we can have boobs and racism at the same time.
Roumania is not Central Europe, it is Eastern Europe and a rather crazy place, and always has been. Little country, big self-esteem and ambitions, with little to offer. The comments above were not “racist,” not in the least, they were cultural.
And as represented they struck me as very accurate — a behind-the-times, old world culture, shared with Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary –fine for them, a bit outre for cultivated Americans, such as there are any. Ahem.
Let’s keep this light, but Angela G. seems to me rather tiresome, not very charming as a person, an interesting looking woman, with an expressive face; the chest seems relatively minor, but so what? They can’t all be Dorothy Kirsten, can they? Oh, and DK always said “make sure your bosom is in good order when you go on stage to sing.” Just so!
iron curtain days are definitely OVER
Well, Gheorghiu has talked about growing up behind the Iron Curtain as an influence, so I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And I am DEFINITELY aware that these countries are different, but I was talking about the social (and possibly artistic) legacy of Communism in general, about certain general similarities. Actually, I’d find a detailed discussion of the differences fascinating, but mostly, I was trying to express offense at the way
that Gheorghiu was labelled. Even though I dislike her.
The Central/Eastern nomenclature thing is, FTR, nitpicking.
It’s a dangerous topic. Something similar like to say that American racism from 20th century are still present in people’s mind.
But this is true. Why shouldn’t this be discussed? There are whole schools of academic theory about such continued presences, certainly in literature, and certainly, these would help us to read the opera as well.
@73: “little to offer”? Eyeroll. Those countries (again, please do forgive the generalizing) have had an EXTREMELY cultured and democratized approach to the arts, extreme and deep traditions and skill in music. I can’t take all the Met-centrism here seriously, for one, when in my youth I saw amateur and much less glitzy performances in “thoooose countries” that have stayed with me for life, with singers who didn’t have much of a career outside that world but who were nonetheless good to great singers.
When AG was first coming onto the scene, we were reading gooey P.R. material that rang false and certainly ‘tarted up’.. Little is ever mentioned about her ‘first’ husband before Rubber Lasagne We got stories how people were very strict with her ‘being a goodaa girl’ and she as a treat being allowed to go and buy a sticky little sweet cake to eat……Ah! is’nt that so delightful? Enough to melt your heart, even!
What started us down this path was the mention of forms of graft and manipulation as the ‘grease of life’ Perhaps due to a lingering fall out from survival in tough environments.. Instilled in unwitting helpless people culturally, through perhaps some past draconian regime. It can cause lingering social ‘over extension’ by people feeling the unnecessary need to try and impress or influence others in happier, freer times or places.. It is a social behavioral problem that was being discussed and nothing else.