photo fop
A layout (in the very nearly literal sense of the term) of “seven international opera stars who are putting to rest the ‘fat lady sings’ cliché” graces the current issue of Vanity Fair. Since nobody actually reads this magazine, La Cieca will link to the photo of the The Low BMI Septet.
Now, it’s one thing that Anna Netrebko is Photoshopped in from a different day, a different location and what may well be a different universe from our own, and don’t ask La Cieca why Mariusz Kwiecien is simultaneously checking his fly and treading on the train of Maija Kovalevska‘s gown. (No wonder she look so pissed!)
But just when you think it’s not humanly possible for Nathan Gunn to take a gayer photograph, the barihunk confounds us yet once more, with a pose that falls on the butch scale somewhere between Madame Recamier and April Stevens.
Or maybe Mr. Gunn can just throw in the towel and start programming “Teach Me Tiger” as an encore at his recitals.
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Mescheriakova and Mishura were not Gergiev or Kirov singers. Mescheriakova came from the Bolshoi and Friend et al. thought she was the next Caballé. Mishura is a good singer but is getting older – she was a Russian emigré who started her career in U.S. regional houses. Not all the crummy Russians were Gergiev’s and not all Gergiev’s people were crummy.
Meanwhile, also in the world of facts, the people who ‘rumoured’ that Damrau was to be brought in for the HD Lucia weren’t very bright, given that she was singing in Munich the night before.
Hagen:
Gelb did not kick Swenson “to the curb.” What he did was not offer her a contract for the 2008-2009 season, based on valid artistic reasons (did you hear any of the Traviatas last year?). It may sound unfeeling, but the fact that a singer is having health problems does not guarantee them a Met contract.
Hagen: If a singer is sick and doesn’t know whether she will be able to sing several days later, that’s being a drama queen? By that standard, every singer who lived was a drama queen.
That Lucia in LA was, what, five years ago? And she sang the performances, didn’t she? Again, many singers are sometimes slack about preparation, including those famous fatties Pavarotti and Caballe, to name just a couple. The difference is that these two were notorious for generally showing up unprepared, whereas Netrebko has overextended herself this way at most a few times in her career.
Speaking of drama queen behavior, what would you call summoning the New York Times and playing the cancer card as a bargaining ploy to get another contract at the Met? How about issuing a stage director a printed list of all the various physical positions and actions one is not prepared to attempt onstage, so don’t ask her? (This one was Eaglen, so I’m told, at San Francisco Opera, and goodness knows enough stage directors complained that whole productions for her had to be devised around the fact that she couldn’t walk more than a few steps at a time.)
I would further submit that the Metropolitan Opera is a place of entertainment, not a hospice for recovering cancer patients. Or are you suggesting that the an overweight, middle-aged singer who doesn’t sell tickets be given special treatment because she’s in recovery from cancer? (And while we’re talking about “kicking to the curb,” let’s remember yet once again that nobody was exactly grabbing Swenson off the curb and putting her into starring roles at Met-level houses. No, she managed to book Adalgisa in Baltimore and a Handel revival at NYCO that she ended up canceling. Ah, such a drama queen!
Especially when they started taking over Verdi. The forgettable Mescheriakova got to sing Luisa Miller, Leonora, Don Carlo, Falstaff. I’d also argue that even very good singers like Borodina got overexposed during the Gergiev era. In her prime she had a beautiful mezzo voice but it wasn’t really suited to Amneris, for example. But aside from her pregnancies and maternity leaves she was singing everything at the Met, and her overcasting led to (IMO) her eventually phoning in performances. The bloom is really off the rose now with her voice, which is a shame.
Of the rest of the Russian invasion only Hvorostovsky was really a grade A singer which is why he’s still in demand everywhere and the rest of them are … I don’t know where they are. Also not a coincidence that as the Met’s relationship with Gergiev cooled these singers were shown the door.
Will you be as obnoxious if Trebs, God forbid, is stricken with some awful disease? What’s wrong with treating someone humanely instead of publicly suggesting that her services are no longer needed, as Gelb did.
Yeah, now that you mention it, I seem to recall hearing that all this Russian casting at the MET was done at a “grassy knoll” in Dallas.
La Cieca:
I’m freaking: you’re reading my mind (and saying it so much better)! Next thing, you’ll be posting about Jack Wrangler!
BTW: the Swenson issue is complicated – she was overexposed. The top was getting problems – the upper register was pulling apart from the rich middle voice. Pianos and soft high notes were getting gluey and fake.
Swenson had like three revival runs of “Traviata” at the Met and Volpe had her scheduled for her fourth – eight performances in Gelb’s first season. He demanded that she give up half of them for Renee Fleming. Gelb was correct here – Swenson’s best Violettas were probably behind her. Fleming’s Violetta were an event. Swenson ended up canceled a few of her Violettas that season and was replaced by Ermonela Jaho.
However, Gelb privately really harrassed Swenson into giving up all of the Cleopatras, a new Met role in a rep that she could still do well, in favor of Danielle de Niese – the new hot thing who had just electrified Glyndebourne and its board chairman with her dancing Cleopatra. Swenson held her ground and threatened litigation. I know La Cieca thinks those Cleopatras were not a success but there is a broadcast – Swenson was maybe the vocally loveliest Cleopatra this production had seen. Danielle de Niese got two cover performances – looked a treat and acted charmingly. The singing was mediocre with a scratchy top and rattly coloratura. Swenson even fat and middle-aged with a wig to cover the hair she lost due to chemo was much better.
Gelb’s comments were always professional and appropriate (he said he looked forward to working with her in the future, which he is doing); Swenson’s were not.