An evening with Aprile
Attached you will find the song lineup for last night’s Aprile Millo recital, though as the saying goes, there were some changes to the printed program.
The first half went more or less as planned, though after the R. Strauss a man exiting the auditorium tripped and fell in the aisle, hit his head on a railing, and was knocked unconscious. A doctor was in the house, so he started to tend to the injury while the house staff called 911.
Meanwhile, Aprile re-entered and started to introduce Lynn Harrell. The audience shouted out to her that there was a man down, so she announced we should remain in our seats to wait for instructions. They took a 30 minute intermission while the EMT were summoned, a stretcher brought in, etc. Then something like the final 2/3 of the recital followed.
My very favorite thing she did all night was the opening of “O sole mio,” that easy, liquid middle voice legato on “Che bella cosa na jurnata ‘e sole…” It’s not bel canto, strictly, because it’s so natural. It’s just simply beautiful singing.
Of the “among,” Aprile elected to sing Fanciulla, Mefistofele, the Zaza duet and the Trovatore duet. Explaining that she was still weak from dieting, she asked our indulgence — which was not necessary for the music sung (the “L’altra notte” in particular was just superb) but rather for the decision to quit while she was ahead in the operatic section and round out the evening with a few (more) parlor songs: “Danny Boy,” a sort of “Wedding of Jack and Jill” piece and then she closed with “Musica Prohibita.”
The middle voice is still lovely, and she needed only about a number and half to sound fully warmed up. She ended most numbers around F or G. She did sing both the written high C in the Fanciulla and the unwritten one in the Trovatore, took a huge if ungainly B-flat (I think it was) in the Zaza, and an absolutely sterling high B in the Boito.
She has indeed lost some weight, emphasized by the tight basque bodice, low sweetheart neckline and crinoline skirt of her concert dress. If you think of Elizabeth Taylor circa 1980 as Leonora in “Trovatore,” you have the effect. The coiffure was quite elaborate, with a big teased wave in the front, a braid embellished with jewels, and a silver lamé mesh snood.
I’ll leave it to the cher public to detail the names and deployment of the dozen or so assisting artists, which included Our Own squirrel’s boyfriend Michael Fabiano.
I don’t like to go after singers’ weight issues but I have to agree with Cassandra’s shock. And La Cieca wasn’t kidding about the dress.
a snood is sort-of a bag made of mesh or net worn on the back of the head, holding a mass of hair. Seems to me Gail Sondergaard used to favor them. (That reference ought to establish my own queer bona-fides…)
@6.3.1.3 Indiana : “Is he covering anything?”
Hopefully he’ll start covering his passagio or he’s going to be in trouble. As one of the judges said in ‘The Audition’, “He’s either going to be great or dead.”
Gran dio, she looks a little like ZINKA now. I hope the poor man who fell is alright, but La Cieca’s description of someone shouting up to an artist onstage “Man down” out here is hysterical.
When will we hear from La Millo, herself? I’ve been checking operavision… Nothing there. Not yet, anyway.
It would be fantastic to hear her reaction to the recital!
Are you reading this, Aprile????
“The men who stare at goats”
Starring George Clooney — now in theatres everywhere!
sorry, squirrel has no idea what any of you are saying.
You are also not old enough!
Go to any 1940s movie!!
One of the dumbest damn films I ever saw;
what a waste of good talent. I want to see
singer Ewen McGregor in opera, preferably
nude!!!
Will JJ review in the Post?
Was the NYT there?
Did the Washington Post
make the trip?
Will PTB reconvene its print
issue to review and
illustrate this
signal event?
The first step, squirrel. Especially since we know you like to store nuts.
Based on these photos, I agree that she’s working an old-fashioned look. I can’t think of a role she could portray convincingly on stage. Definitely not Minnie. Perhaps an opera based on the life of Ethel Merman?
Snood.
thank you for the enlightenment. I thought I would have to go to bed as ignorant as I was when I awoke. That snood goes well with the doily. Is that a prop from a recent Salome production in Ogunquit?
So from the dress and the description of her hair it seems like she looked like a 1980s drag queen that night. What happened to her career? Getting fat doesn’t seem like a good answer. I’ve heard people suggest that she took on rep. that was too heavy much too early in her career, but I really don’t know much about her and I haven’t listened to many of her recordings.
Her weight gain no longer looks to me like from eating too much but more likely a physiological problem, e.g., glandular.
Millo was a great hope at one point. The voice was large, ample. Like her idol, Tebaldi, there was some difficulty accessing the upper register (seeds of doom), but in the 90s youth covered all.
Unfortunately, the years of singing Verdi exacerbated the upper register issues (a wobble started to creep in) and her confidence went out the door. Her mannerisms which were endearing in the early days (is channelling Renata or Zinka today) became intolerable eccentricities (I cannot imagine someone like Gelb tolerating her for more than the time it took to have her escorted from his office).
Also, her near fetishism for Tebaldi and Zinka was ultimately a real problem for her. It meant that she never made a mark as HERSELF.
A good lesson for singers far less gifted than Millo.
By the way, I have everything she ever recorded except for the Luisa Miller. The Aida is the best since Price. The Trovatore Leonora is again the only modern recording that can be even mentioned in comparison with LP, and the Elisabetta di Valois are as fine as any on record.
I alway wondered why Millo has so little regard for Leontyne. God knows she would have been a much better model for career management, vocal longevity and good high notes.
There is not a single opera you can cast Miss Millo properly nowadays and let’s be frank abut that: she is totally unreliable and cannoot sing a whole production run.
No drastic weightloss measures like Debbie Voight for sure, perhaps she can be the one to revive the grand ol’ operatic tradition of tapeworm weight loss therapy.
I think Aprile’s actual weight nowadays is unimportant. Certainly many singers have been fatter (Montsy anyone? And VdlA also got very large later in life), but Aprile has been very open in her blog that she *feels* fat, that she is trying very hard to lose weight, and that she feels like her appearance is preventing her comeback. It’s kind of like how “fat Callas” never looked that fat to me — she just looked like a sort of overweight, big-boned soprano. But it was important for Maria to lose that weight.