Hysterical Divas

You have to hand it to Kiri Te Kanawa. She does a fine self parody of the operatic diva. Hardly the tigress that Maria Callas was, but getting there. Her criticism of Hayley Westernra is laughable to those of us who have little regard for the horrible warbling of operatic sopranos of any tinge.

Te Kanawa's beef is that Westernra and other crossover singers (popera) are rubbish. Sounds like the old girl is feeling the pinch as the times change. I worked to market opera with the Auckland Opera company in the mid nineties. The question for opera then was how to make the art form relevant to a modern audience. Perhaps one the defining moments for opera was when Pavarotti sang at the world cup of soccer. Instantly Nessum Dorma entered the consciousness of a vast global audience. The arrival of singers like Westernra and Church and groups like Il Divo might be one of the few ways that opera at its purest and most awful form can even hope to survive. Audiences are aging (and therefore dying) and restaging standard repertoire and more obscure alternatives only has so much scope before it becomes absurd (How would you like your Janaceck madam?).

Once again Kiri comes out looking like a self important harridan who is so used to being fawned over that she has begun to believe that her deification is complete. Remember when she refused to take the stage with John Farnham?

I would rather eat my own foot (shoe on) than listen to any of the performers listed above. Nothing wrong with any of them (…OK, maybe Johnny Farnham might be a bit suspect), but, then, there's no accounting for taste. Or its absence.

Comments

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si

ThoughtSpurs

Search This Blog