Remember Dragana Jugovic del Monaco? Oh, come on, who could ever forget? Well, she’s back (or was back, anyway, as of 1999) for the following crossover effort with a pop singer who La Cieca supposes must be billed as something like “The Ozzy Osbourne of the Republic of Serbia.” Read more »
Dame Kiri te Kanawa‘s cousin (who calls the opera diva “auntie because of the age difference”) is promoting “Australia’s first pole-dancing championships.” Read more »
People often come up to me and say, La Cieca, “Who do you think will be the next Renée Fleming?” Well, all, right, that doesn’t actually happen often, or even rarely. In fact, it doesn’t happen at all. But be that as it may, La Cieca has found “the next Renée Fleming,” or at least someone who will be able to take up the slack in pop crossover when Fleming finally figures out how awful she sounds in this stuff. Again, it’s not like that’s going to happen, but, anyway, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Measha Brueggergosman. To which I can only add, “Oh, honey!” Read more »
From that rarest and most coveted of all camp crossover efforts, the Sylvia Sass disco album:
Some songs just steadfastly repel the crossover treatment. Some years ago Karita Mattila came to grief on “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” and now Anne Sofie von Otter doesn’t do much better. (Why does it always sound like they coached this number with The Opera Milf?)
“Ein Film, das Sie nie vergessen werden,” says the announcer, and this claim may very well be true. Presenting Das Lied der Balalaika, a 1971 attempt by “opera singer” Ivan Rebroff to cross over into… well, it’s difficult to define exactly the genre here. L’homme qui vient de la nuit (as the picture is entitled, even more confusingly, in French) is a musical; it’s a thriller; it’s a circus melodrama — sort of Yes, Giorgio meets The French Connection meets Berserk! And La Cieca is not even going to try to figure out what the smoking chimps are all about. [...]
Cher Public