“Among the floats, marching bands, and gigantic balloons of Chicago’s BMO Harris Bank Magnificent Mile Lights Festival will be a horse-drawn surrey from Lyric Opera of Chicago…. [I]n the surrey will be Lyric Opera general director Anthony Freud, dressed in appropriate western garb. Freud, who hails from London, spent five years as the general director of Houston Grand Opera and is no stranger to bolo ties and 10-gallon Stetsons.”
Unconcealed by the voluminous folds of this Jessyesqe muumuu is queen-sized talent Jeffery Roberson (also known as Varla Jean Merman), who will make his New York opera debut later this week, in, modestly enough, The Medium, everyone’s favorite supernatural Menotti Broadway slasher opera. Details for this event— which might have been genetically engineered to appeal to the mind of the average parterrian—follow the jump. Read more »
“Considering one of the season’s star singers is a plus-size female impersonator, opera this fall is anything but a drag.” Our Own JJ lays down the law on the subject of autumnal opera attendance to his base audience of jaded roués and gay divorcées who lunch at the Ritz. [New York Post]
Separated at the 14th Street wig store: drag queen Lady Bunny and Disney princess Diana Damrau.
Versatile diva Violeta Urmana takes on the demanding verismo role of Giordano’s Fedora for the first time at… Oh, sorry, that’s René Pape as Méphistophélès in Faust at Covent Garden! (Photo by Catherine Ashmore)
“A profile of Richard Eyre – ‘All good actors are quick-witted’, 27 November, page 12, Review – mentioned the theatre director’s recollection of having played one of the Three Little Maids in a school production of The Pirates of Penzance. Clarification has since come from the interviewee that in Pirates he played Kate, one of four maids, the daughters of Major-General Stanley (the Three Little Maids, for their part, belong to The Mikado).” [The Guardian]
As we launch into the fourth and final movement of our étude, La Cieca asks the musical question, “Can a Contemporary Diva achieve Grandezza, or, for that matter, Drag Imitability?” Let’s see what the numbers tell us.
Cher Public