cast party
Dear departed Shelley Winters knew a thing or two about the diva experience, and one of her most apt mediations on the topic may be found in her memoir
She was starring in the Broadway production of A Hatful of Rain, and during rehearsals she stumbled on the heavily raked stage, fracturing an ankle. As such, she had to open the show on crutches. After one performance, Ms. Winters continues:
I was resting in my dressing room when Joan Crawford came backstage. “Well, Shelley,” she haughtily informed me, “you were very powerful and had the entire audience weeping, but if I had a role with a drug-addict husband, was seven months pregnant, and had a broken leg, I could make the entire audience faint.”
La Cieca is not sure exactly how this all relates, but she vaguely intuits it has something to do with two opera-related pieces in today’s New York Times.
To put it briefly and bluntly, yeah, sure, in La traviata Renée Fleming may have “conveyed emotional ambiguity, the coquettish facade of a kept woman determined to convey pride and sexual allure, while her shame lurks just below the surface.” But she didn’t do it in a wheelchair, did she?
Hmmmm–doesn’t the fact that she conveyed all that WITHOUT a wheelchair count for anything?
But yes, the great Joyce di Donato is kind of in a class by herself. And that brings up ANOTHER Joan Crawford movie. When she and Bette Davis were making Baby Jane, there was some situation–heat, dust in the air, SOMETHING that caused Crawford to say she couldn’t do the next scenes. Davis apparently opined aloud: “Gee, I thought we were all troupers here.” La Donato is very definitely a trouper.
Tony T’s coverage of the ROH La traviata comes at the end of the run. Odd. (Of course, much about Tony T. is odd, isn’t it?) For the NY-London commute crowd, and it’s a busy bunch, a review early on in the run would have been much more in order. Of course the DiDonato/Leg/Rosina review will turn them out, perhaps, for the balance of the run. I found the tone of both articles this morning a bit out of tune. DiDonato is on a “roll” observes TT. Oh? A roll? To my observation her career has been building over time to a good level, and she is ever more popular, but it seems to me an orderly progression, and not a sudden wave of approval. I think he’s off the point on that one. And his praise of Mme. Fleming is so full of qualifications, one wonders why he bothered? The photo of Callaja confirms my impression that he is just an ordinary looking bloke with a nice tenor, but nothing to get stirred up over — certainly he’s not one of TT’s “strapping” hunks. I hate to think what the NYT paid in expenses for TT to visit London — one of the most expensive of all destinations, and what do they have to show for it. A big bill from the Dorchester?
We seem to be in a season of broken or strained limbs from raked stage accidents, Brewer and all the others. I wonder why? Is this something stage designers need to take into account? There are ways to get around it if one wants to bother. And post-menopausal divas can be very brittle, can’t they (present company excepted, of course)?
I’ve never noted a stage injury for Mme. Fleming … does her slender fleetness facilitate more judicious movement? And Miss Dessay, who moves more than almost any singer I know, seems never to suffer stage-injuries. Some can do it and some cannot.
As you all know, when asked what was the most important requirement for singing Isolde, Birgit answered “a comfortable pair of shoes”.
Now you know she wasn’t kidding.
Tony on Renee:
“Ms. Fleming’s critics object to her penchant for inflecting lines with expressive twists and tugs. But on this night the interpretive touches and vocal colorings she brought to her singing seemed not at all calculated: rather, spontaneous expressions of feeling. Even little vocal glitches and some strained top notes were such a part of this intensely felt portrayal that they were hardly noticeable.”
I love it when critics make excuses for singers they are fond of. I know we all do it … but if the glitches were ‘hardly noticeable’, why did he notice them?
This topic has been beaten to death. And both sides have very valid ground to stand on.
However, to compare an international emerging star mezzo soprano (singing lighter rep) to a soprano (singing much heavier rep) who is arguably acknowledged as the leading classical singer of her generation seems a little out of touch with reality. It is like comparing cognac to champagne – no coca cola (I’m paraphrasing).