“You see, I don’t play roles. I find color for every role inside of me.” The soprano Marina Poplavskaya likes to talk about how she sees music as colors. She is also given to morbidly poetic formulations like “Let the harmony penetrate you like a silent knife through your heart.” [New York Observer]
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“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who are the greatest divas (Classic and Contemporary) of them all?” And the mirror replied, “I’ll tell you right after the jump!”
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.
And now, cher public, let’s put today’s singers, the Contemporary Divas, under the microscope. How do they stack up?
La Cieca continues to apply the Kang Method to the dozen divas of the Classic mode. This time, our five criteria for diva status offer fewer total points, but the difficulty level remains the same. Especially for Renata Scotto.
We begin our Kang Method statistical analysis of That Which is Called Diva with a dozen Classic Divas: Hildegard Behrens, Montserrat Caballé, Régine Crespin, Mirella Freni, Marilyn Horne, Christa Ludwig, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Leonie Rysanek, Renata Scotto, Joan Sutherland and Tatiana Troyanos, henceforth called by first name or nickname as applicable. Our first report…
La Cieca invites the cher public to act as blue-ribbon panel in selecting the singers to be included in the “Greatest Diva” study. Voting after the jump.
La Cieca was delighted, amused and infuriated (three of her favorite emotions) when she read yet another wonderful piece over at The Awl yesterday, a statistical analysis determining The Greatest Diva of the Past 25 Years. This treatise, by one Jay Caspian Kang, was limited in scope to ladies inhabiting the realm of popular music,…
A century ago, Mary Garden parlayed an interview with the New York Times on the subject of her bizarre attire into blatant promotion for an upcoming tour date. Miss Garden truly was the Lady Gaga of her day. [The Awl]
It’s true, it’s true! Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch are going into A Little Night Music! The iconic pair will open in the show on Broadway on July 13. Note: autoplaying video and after the jump!
“…Tony Award winners Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch have been approached to succeed Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, respectively, in the roles of the captivating actress Desirée Armfeldt and her worldly-wise mother Madame Armfeldt.” [Playbill]
Enthusiastic Met intermission commentator Blythe Danner and her Oscar-winning daughter/blogger Gwyneth Paltrow are on the short list…
It’s safe to say that there has been a lot of talk about Rufus Wainwright’s opera Prima Donna, which received its London premiere this week.
An all-star “Walkürenritt” from 2003, featuring Alessandra Marc (Gerhilde), Eva Marton (Helmwige), Karan Armstrong (Waltraute), Agnes Baltsa (Schwertleite), Anna Tomowa-Sintow (Ortlinde), Gwyneth Jones (Siegrune/Rossweisse) and Jochen Kowalski (Grimgerde). Golden Girls
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