Don’t crossover, DeNiese. There’s really no way back
OperaThe Glyndebourne chatelaine explains today why she is swapping the starring role in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at her husband’s festival for a revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love in the West End.
‘It was such an unusual opportunity,’ she gushes in the Times. ‘A choreographer friend convinced me. He said, ‘Do you realise there’s not any other opera singers who are doing musical theatre in the West End and there’s no other musical theatre singers who are doing opera? You’re in a really unique position.’’
Someone please tell her there’s no way back.
Keli O’Hara might beg to differ.
Perhaps, but as the saying goes, “Beer before wine makes you feel fine….” etc.
Renee Fleming has done pretty well for herself doing a mix of musical theater, indie-rock crossover (remember Dark Hope?), and new works like The Hours. There was also a singer named Pavarotti who did his share. Genre boundaries are for the incurious and narrow-minded.
Renee was, well let’s just say, less than successful in her crossover forays. I don’t care if she sang jazz in college; she never understood the genre. For a good example of her crossover work check out “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at the Nobel Prize ceremonies a few years back. I’ve never felt so sorry for a performer. It was cringeworthy, but a boon for impersonators.
However, many opera singers have successfully crossed-over; surprisingly–given her heights as an opera singer–Leontyne Price nailed her outings in popular music, especially with Andre Previn.
Renee has done quite a few other things in the 20+ years since Over the Rainbow. Her colleagues in various genres seem to respect her. People keep offering her a wide variety of opportunities and she seems to enjoy performing all kinds of music. She did a great job on a duet with John Prine a few years ago for Chicago Voices. I admire her willingness to keep trying new things. Why not?
Nailed? Crucified might be a better description. Leontyne was indeed fond of her one crossover album “Right as the Rain” but in fact Previn grew to loath it and regretted participating in it. He breathed a sigh of relief when the album was basically ignored. Leontyne got the pop bug out of her system and went back to her day-job.
I never remember Pavarotti doing West End or Broadway musicals. Three Tenors-type concerts are not the same thing.
In what sense is there no way back? She’s already booked in for ‘Julias Ceaser’ in Egypt in Rome later this year, and Boheme at Covent Garden early next year. In addition to that she’s not really going to struggle for roles at Glyndebourne if she chooses to do that is she?
What you actually mean is that you sniff at her for doing ‘cross-over’……..but that’s not the same thing as there being ‘no way back’.
About the right thing for her
No boundaries in music…
Frankly, she is more suited to musical theatre.
Check her out with Les Arts Florissants/Christie and “Les Indes Galantes” from a decade or so ago.
You might want to ask (Sir) Bryn Terfel about this – he seems to have “made it back”…
Bryn has always done it all brilliantly, never losing his integrity in any of the different worlds. So having never left he doesn’t need to find a way back.
I love your name by the way, can you sing that aria?
Sir Bryn is a brilliant performer and personality who can hold an audience by his mere presence. There aren’t many.
That’s perfectly true (friends saw him singing on a cruise ship, of all things!!) but it did somewhat put a dent in his credibility index, for me.
“Do you realise there’s not any other opera singers who are doing musical theatre in the West End”
Lesley Garrett, fresh from opera with ENO, Opera North and WNO in the last few years, was on tour with My Fair Lady last and this year. In 2018 she was with WNO AND in a play on tour and in the West End. Did Merry Widow with WNO in 2005, then Sound of Music at the Palladium (ALW production) in 2006….
People’s knowledge can be quite limited, can’t it?
Does Alfie Boe count too?
My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music is hardly what we call musical theatre – such as Chicago and the more modern MT things that really do mess up an opera singer’s voice. You have to be able to sing to do those older ones, and Ivor Novello and the likes, and you don’t need amplification either.
Yes, especially when Google is available!!
It was perhaps a different era of “musical theater” when it came to voices, but going back a bit many fine singers moved easily between the two, including James Melton, Richard Crooks, John Charles Thomas, Grace Moore, Kathryn Grayson, and the list goes on. And these singers were sought-after, respected and recorded, in both, and indeed often performed both in their radio appearances.
It is indeed different today. Now anyone with a mic up their kiester can be a musical theater star.
Kathryn Grayson was like a canary in those Freed and Pasternak units at MGM. The latter known for it’s ‘classical music’!! LOL
Peter Hofmann? Unusual career, sad ending.
There is a way back: for musical theater to return to its pre-1960s use of natural voices instead of microphones. Somehow I don’t think that is what DeNeise is after, but it sure would improve the musical quality of the shows.
What a superb artists this woman is!! I’ve seen her in Vienna in Handel when she was fabulous – and she looks gorgeous too. Danielle, don’t do it!!
Dawn Upshaw is brilliant at Cole Porter etc. Another exception that proves the rule that crossover is generally terrible, from either direction.
Good on her. Her voice is well suited to the Lloyd Webber role; as it is well suited to most of the operatic stuff she takes on. She’s a great performer.
I mean, most German opera houses have staff opera singers who also regularly sing in all the operettas they endlessly stage (which English speaking audiences have never heard of.)
“Crossing over” is incredibly common, and there is a lot of people who did it very well, regularly, back and forth – with the right repertoire.