Word: divas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...combative diva, 45, is the darling of a huge public, a glamorous former schoolteacher from Portsmouth, Ohio, who possesses one of the loveliest voices in opera today. Thanks to her supple, dulcet soprano and winning stage personality -- and with the powerful patronage of Met artistic director James Levine -- she has risen to worldwide fame in secondary roles that ordinarily do not make stars, parts like Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni and Sophie in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. Battle's presence in a cast or with an orchestra practically guarantees a sold-out house; her albums, whether art songs...
...think she's frightened to death," says former diva Beverly Sills, now chairwoman of Lincoln Center. "She's obviously an insecure girl, with a perfectly beautiful voice. You can't do an opera all by yourself. No matter how big a superstar you are, if you don't have a collaboration with your colleagues, you're in a lot of trouble. I think it's wiser to concentrate on singing like a prima donna than on acting like...
...fires the temperamental soprano for being diva-like...
...London the forgotten silent-film star Norma Desmond skulked around her overdecorated mansion like a female Phantom of the Opera, remote and unreachable. In Los Angeles, even as she rages like a deranged diva, she shows endearing glints of awareness of her own tawdry emotional blackmail. A single image encapsulates the difference. When London's Norma, Patti LuPone, got her seedy protege back, by a suicide attempt, she collapsed into his arms in maudlin gratitude. The Los Angeles incarnation, Glenn Close, ends the act by lifting her bandaged arms above his embracing form, her fingers curving like talons to take...
...career move. The musical iconoclast, best known for his work with the seminal 1960s rock band the Mothers of Invention, was in many ways the prisoner of his own raffish image: hirsute hippie freak; countercultural sire of prototypical Valley Girl Moon Unit Zappa and her siblings Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva; opinionated crank ("AIDS is a CIA plot"); and First Amendment scourge of Tipper Gore. With his death from prostate cancer, a few days short of his 53rd birthday, it may now be easier to appreciate an often overlooked fact about Francis Vincent Zappa: he was the most protean and adventurous...