New Opera Focuses on Bill Clinton's Life - Washington Whispers

From U.S. News & World Report:

If any recent president's life is the stuff of operas, it's Bill Clinton's. There's been comedy, drama, back-stabbing, shouting, crying, death, and many miraculous comebacks. But that's real life. Now art will be imitating life in a project coming together in Little Rock and meant to show how his struggles as a kid raised by a fun-loving mother influenced the making of the 42nd president.

File this under bleh. This might be interesting if Clinton didn't support it--in fact, was actively fighting to have it stopped--but with his support, it is sure to be hagiography.

Lena Horne Is Remembered at Funeral Mass

From NYT:

"In the pews were hundreds of mourners, among them Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Lauren Bacall, Chita Rivera, Cicely Tyson, Vanessa Williams and Gov. David A. Paterson. Leslie Uggams said that Ms. Horne had been someone to look up to. “When my father reluctantly figured out that I was going to go in show business,” Ms. Uggams recalled outside the church, he said, “I want you to be like Lena.”

The service began with a cello piece by Bach. Later, Audra McDonald performed an arrangement of “This Little Light of Mine” and “Amazing Grace,” and one of four speakers, Representative John Lewis of Georgia, said Ms. Horne had been “a light, and she did shine."

I never had much of an opinion about Lena Horne--a passable supper-club singer, a civil wright stalwart, a beautiful woman, an MGM star that could never really became a star--until I learned, in Billy Strayhorn's biography Lush Life, she was very close to Ellington's legendary collaborator, and I purchased a record of her standards called, unsurprisingly, Stormy Weather--both her signature song and film role. Both gave me a better appreciation for her gifts and her personality.

Stormy Weather was a great film, and she was a giant.

The list of mourners is fantastic--Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman the ones I was most pleased to see.

Royal Opera to stage Anna Nicole premiere

From the Beeb:

"The Royal Opera House (ROH) is to stage the world premiere of an opera about the life of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, who died in 2007.

The work, by composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and writer Richard Thomas, will be 'a major event in the UK arts calendar' the ROH said."

File this under CRAZY.

Renée Fleming, Opera Star, Tries a Rock Album

From NYTimes:

"Renée Fleming, a darling of the opera world, has a new album titled “Dark Hope,” on which she covers indie rock acts. The classical world scratches its head at the impulse. The recording’s promoters — and Ms. Fleming herself — shy away from labeling it a crossover album, calling it instead, “somewhat sheepishly,” as Anthony Tommasini, the chief classical music critic of The New York Times, wrote in Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section, a visit to a “parallel universe.”"

First Peter Gabriel, now Renée Fleming, covers indie rock. I don't love this album, but I like it more than I expected, and in an appropriate twist, she covers—the best one, in my estimation—In Your Eyes, that anthem for Lloyd Dobblers everywhere, myself included. I could have done without the 10 millionth Hallelujah, however. There should be a moratorium on covers of that song.