Adriana and reality TV

Gosh, I'm missing magnolia for quick-and-easy linking. I suppose I shall just create individual blog entries for links, like I used to in the old days.

So, apologies to people on FeedReaders who may see an exponential rise in the number of posts from me.

A profile of Svetlana Dvoretskaia, who "is president of Show One Productions, responsible for bringing such productions as AGA-BOOM! and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo to Toronto." Most of which is actually just a shopping list of designer labels (zzzzzzzzzzzzz) but contains four intriguing sentences

She is just back from New York where she was taking a meeting with Placido Domingo...What is she doing with Domingo?

"It's not just a concert production, it is involved with reality TV. I do music; that is my involvement in the project."

No doubt we will find out more in due course.

Meanwhile, Katrina brings us a review of Adriana Lecouvrer - Opera...and an odyssey She went to see it because her friend was in the ballet. Her previous experience was La Gioconda!

Adriana was silly enough to be entertaining. Stuff happened (albeit silly, implausible stuff), and kept happening, and there were nasty catfights between two strong women. This one was lots more fun!

And Placido Domingo?

Even to someone like me who admits to knowing next to nothing about music, his voice was...heavenly. Truly. So crystal and clear and haunting. There was just something about it that raised the hair on my arms, gave me goosebumps, and made me want to weep. I'm serious! I didn't want to breathe when he was singing.

I don't know how to write about music. I can't even to begin to describe how beautiful, how reverent it felt to be in that presence, to hear that voice live.

What a stage presence, too. Anna said he was very nice, that he's a bit of a flirt, and that he told the dancers they were "delicious girls."

Plácido a bit of a flirt? I don't think there's any 'bit of' about it!

Update: Just in, from the Associated Press

Placido Domingo tries to turn back clock at Met

The fact that Domingo is still performing at all after 40 seasons (50,  actually) amazing. If it can't be said that his attempt to turn back the clock was an unqualified success, at least it was an honorable effort with considerable rewards...

...Domingo still moves and acts with enviable grace for a performer old enough to be his character's grandfather. But it does stretch credulity to picture him as a romantic idol for whom two glamorous women are willing to battle to the death. (oh yeah?  This reviewer really doesn't know women!)...

...What made it all worthwhile were those moments, especially in the final act, when that familiar Domingo sound rang out in the cavernous Met auditorium. At its best, it's still a thrilling voice — ardent and muscular, supported by a rock-solid technique that has kept him going all these years while so many promising younger tenors have come and gone from the scene.