Post by carousal on Sept 21, 2009 16:26:29 GMT -5
If ever I feel low I re-read this and listen to a few bars (I have never reached the end) by that time I’m in tears if laughter.
Enjoy.
New York Daily News, Big Town
She had enthusiasm, and she had enough money to finance her operatic career.
What she didn't have was talent.
For 30 years, Manhattan's upper crust paid good money to hear this hefty woman murder the melodies. Her name was Florence Foster Jenkins: the dire diva of din, the caterwauling countess of cacophony. At private recitals, she usually donned her Angel of Inspiration costume, a tulle gown and a tinsel tiara buttressed with a pair of feathered wings that made her resemble an overgrown turkey. To the accompaniment of a beleaguered pianist who rejoiced in the name Cosme McMoon, she would launch into her opening number, usually the Queen of the Night's aria from Mozart's "Magic Flute." The audience got caught full-blast with a sound like alley cats pitching whoopee.
She billed herself as a coloratura soprano, but Florence Foster Jenkins couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Her voice shifted abruptly between a shriek and a whisper. Utterly tone-deaf, she wandered all over the scale, occasionally singing the right note by sheer accident. When attempting the high notes of an aria, her mouth would continue forming the words but no sound would emerge from her throat. Audience members would cram handkerchiefs into their mouths to muffle their guffaws.
After mangling "The May Night" by Brahms, La Jenkins would announce a brief intermission, then return dressed as Carmen, with a lace shawl and jeweled combs, clutching castanets and a wicker basket of red roses. The audience would remain riveted while she screeched her way through the Spanish waltz "Clavelitos," clicking the castanets and tossing the roses out one by one. When she ran out of roses, she flung the basket too. And then she threw the castanets.
Her fans - and she had many - knew that "Clavelitos" was her favorite song, so there were usually calls for an encore. This prompted her to send Cosme McMoon into the audience to retrieve roses, basket and castanets. Props back in hand, she would sing the entire number again.
She had such a following that she rewarded her fans with recordings of her favourite pieces, allowing us today to witness the Diva in full flow. If you manage to get to the end you are in dire need of therapy.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h4f77T-LoM
