Word: diva
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...Arianna Stassinopoulos (as she then was) brought out a biography of the diva Maria Callas, heavily borrowed from several earlier works, including Callas by John Ardoin and Gerald Fitzgerald. It was a best seller. Now it is the turn of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), the quintessential modern artist. Picasso is on the front cover, looking haggard. On the back is Huffington, looking glamorous. Her fixed smile displays a row of pearly teeth: no stains or chips. Which is remarkable, given that they have bitten off so much more than they can chew...
...seem that way, but Diva Beverly Sills is the retiring type. At twelve, she was the girl on the Rinso White radio commercials. Then she retired. By 32, she had come back and was a leading singer at the New York City Opera. Then she retired. By 49, she had not only returned but was also the company's prima donna. Again she retired. Last week the brilliant coloratura soprano announced that next January she will once more retire, this time from her incarnation as director of City Opera. "So far," says Sills, "I have been lucky to know...
...young people disrobe in an English mansion. Robert Altman had the inspiration to show a restless 17th century audience at Rameau's Les Boreades, then neglected to develop his night-at-the-opera sketch with any coherence. Derek Jarman's episode, to Charpentier's Louise, imagines an old diva taking a final curtain call, her mind garlanded with fading memories. Sweet but frail...
Lloyd Webber gives his wife every help, beginning with her vocal introduction. Although Phantom is garlanded with opera pastiche, it subliminally nudges opera aside in favor of pop by offering the winsome ballad Think of Me first in the overripe, rococo style of a diva (Judy Kaye), then in Brightman's appealingly unadorned rendition. The device hints that the Phantom and his chosen instrument will become the means for remaking musical entertainment. If that claim is to be taken as Lloyd Webber's judgment of his own role in the theater, however, it seems premature. His knack for crafting...
...East European talent to the West for cash or merchandise. Polish soccer goalies, Czechoslovak hockey forwards and East German handball coaches are only part of the business. Such athletes have been joined by thousands of other performers, ranging from the likes of renowned Czechoslovak Soprano Gabriela Benachkova, a diva at the prestigious Milan and Vienna opera houses, to Hungarian gypsy bands, Polish striptease artists, Bulgarian pop singers and Rumanian high-wire circus acts. Although the East bloc governments refuse to disclose the revenues they reap from the talent trade, Western economists estimate that contracts for 1986 alone may have amounted...