# Florence Foster Jenkins bio pic



## Eramirez156 (Mar 25, 2015)

http://www.broadwayworld.com/articl...e-Foster-Jenkins-in-Upcoming-Biopic-20150522#


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I contemplate this project with apprehension. Most people will be unacquainted with the real Florence Foster Jenkins, will not have heard her "sing," and will have to be persuaded by the presence of Ms. Streep and some fancy publicity to go and see the movie. Jenkins was a woman of serious musical ambitions who began as a child prodigy pianist and eventually turned to singing. Unfortunately she had a dreadful voice and little sense of pitch or rhythm (one wonders how she played the piano in concert without at least the latter), and only her great wealth allowed her to buy performance venues and even to get to Carnegie Hall at the age of 76. Her recordings are hilarious to listen to, but in truth she was a deluded and tragic woman. I can only wonder how the film will portray the ridiculousness of her singing, which no one would listen to now except for laughs (will Streep be able to mimic her singing, or will it be dubbed?), and at the same time reveal the pathos of a woman whose limitless money allowed her to go on thinking, until near the end of her life, that she was doing something of value. 

I'm really surprised that the film is being made at all. I suppose I'll see it sometime, but I'm afraid it might be hard to laugh at her horrid singing once I've seen the sad life behind it.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I saw an excellent play about her life some years ago. Called _Glorious_ and starring the excellent Maureen Lipman, it managed to make us laugh as well as sympathise with her sad, tragic life. If anyone can pull it off on screen, I'm sure Streep can.

Coincidentally, Streep is also set to play Callas in a TV movie version of Terrence McNally's play *Masterclass*.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I contemplate this project with apprehension. Most people will be unacquainted with the real Florence Foster Jenkins, will not have heard her "sing," and will have to be persuaded by the presence of Ms. Streep and some fancy publicity to go and see the movie. Jenkins was a woman of serious musical ambitions who began as a child prodigy pianist and eventually turned to singing. Unfortunately she had a dreadful voice and little sense of pitch or rhythm (one wonders how she played the piano in concert without at least the latter), and only her great wealth allowed her to buy performance venues and even to get to Carnegie Hall at the age of 76. Her recordings are hilarious to listen to, but in truth she was a deluded and tragic woman. I can only wonder how the film will portray the ridiculousness of her singing, which no one would listen to now except for laughs (will Streep be able to mimic her singing, or will it be dubbed?), and at the same time reveal the pathos of a woman whose limitless money allowed her to go on thinking, until near the end of her life, that she was doing something of value.
> 
> I'm really surprised that the film is being made at all. I suppose I'll see it sometime, but I'm afraid it might be hard to laugh at her horrid singing once I've seen the sad life behind it.


I have to see this. Pure camp. Pure '_Citizen Kane_,' actually.

_"Susan, you will continue with your lessons. I will not be made ridiculous."_

Awesome. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I'm just laughing thinking about the screenplay possibilities for the real Florence Foster Jenkins.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> I contemplate this project with apprehension. Most people will be unacquainted with the real Florence Foster Jenkins, will not have heard her "sing," and will have to be persuaded by the presence of Ms. Streep and some fancy publicity to go and see the movie. Jenkins was a woman of serious musical ambitions who began as a child prodigy pianist and eventually turned to singing. Unfortunately she had a dreadful voice and little sense of pitch or rhythm (one wonders how she played the piano in concert without at least the latter), and only her great wealth allowed her to buy performance venues and even to get to Carnegie Hall at the age of 76. Her recordings are hilarious to listen to, but in truth she was a deluded and tragic woman. I can only wonder how the film will portray the ridiculousness of her singing, which no one would listen to now except for laughs (will Streep be able to mimic her singing, or will it be dubbed?), and at the same time reveal the pathos of a woman whose limitless money allowed her to go on thinking, until near the end of her life, that she was doing something of value.
> 
> I'm really surprised that the film is being made at all. I suppose I'll see it sometime, but I'm afraid it might be hard to laugh at her horrid singing once I've seen the sad life behind it.


Just adding: very well said, and: I´m no specialist on the Jenkins-subject, but I wonder whether any assumption of "conscious clownishness" is a totally ruled out theory nowadays.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

It seems the French have beaten them to it.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/marguerite/

Can't understand this at all. It's not even a one joke situation.

Watched it on a plane and headed for the nearest door. Very painful.

Music lovers: avoid.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Belowpar said:


> It seems the French have beaten them to it.
> 
> http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/marguerite/
> 
> ...


I must admit, one got to have no self knowledge to do things like she did:tiphat:


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Wow, I always thought she was a comedian. She was serious?


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Belowpar said:


> It seems the French have beaten them to it.
> 
> http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/marguerite/
> 
> ...


Yes, I just saw Marguerite, and hated it. The acting is excellent, but the film is cruel, cynical and in dubious taste. The most unpleasant scenes are the concert organised by an anarchist, and the final scene with the monstrous callousness of her butler.

Someone did their research, though; there are photos of Dumont in opera costumes, including as Posthumia and Fides.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Belowpar said:


> It seems the French have beaten them to it.
> 
> http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/marguerite/
> 
> ...


Now there are *two * FFJ biopics?  I mean, once might be funny (though not the French one by the sound of it...) I just think, if only the _real_ singers of the day could receive such posthumous attention and wall to wall media coverage- though I don't know who we'd find to play them in a movie.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I contemplate this project with apprehension. Most people will be unacquainted with the real Florence Foster Jenkins, will not have heard her "sing," and will have to be persuaded by the presence of Ms. Streep and some fancy publicity to go and see the movie. Jenkins was a woman of serious musical ambitions who began as a child prodigy pianist and eventually turned to singing. Unfortunately she had a dreadful voice and little sense of pitch or rhythm (one wonders how she played the piano in concert without at least the latter), and only her great wealth allowed her to buy performance venues and even to get to Carnegie Hall at the age of 76. Her recordings are hilarious to listen to, but in truth she was a deluded and tragic woman. I can only wonder how the film will portray the ridiculousness of her singing, which no one would listen to now except for laughs (will Streep be able to mimic her singing, or will it be dubbed?), and at the same time reveal the pathos of a woman whose limitless money allowed her to go on thinking, until near the end of her life, that she was doing something of value.
> 
> I'm really surprised that the film is being made at all. I suppose I'll see it sometime, but I'm afraid it might be hard to laugh at her horrid singing once I've seen the sad life behind it.


Streep's doing the singing apparently- not surprisingly, for those who saw her in _Mamma Mia_! This was in an interview with the actress in the Sunday Times this morning:

_Streep, who had opera singing lessons in her youth, first heard a Foster Jenkins recording while studying at Yale School of Drama in the early 1970s. "It wasn't just that she was bad, but that she was bad with heart", she says, pointing out that Foster Jenkins was aspirational and terrible, moving and amusing. "She had such delight. And you could hear her preparation. You could hear her" - she mimics deep breaths- "getting ready to do the phrase, then coming in late. She sails through so much of it successfully- almost- then gets to the thing she really needs the breath for and runs out".

Even then, as a student, Streep felt a connection. Every actor, she says, knows what it is "to fail at the end of a line". And while the screenwriter of Florence Foster Jenkins, Nicholas Martin, was not aware of this footnote in Streep's biography, he penned the script with her in mind. "I kept thinking, 'Well, it's got everything that she's going to like, and it's going to stretch her in all the ways she likes to be stretched'" he recalls. "The central character needs to have real musicality [roles in Mamma Mia, Into the Woods, and Ricki and the Flash have amply demonstrated Streep's vocal abilities] and I really did think there was a good chance she would like it."_

'Real musicality'- good grief! :lol: And the article mentions poor FFJ's syphilis (from a philandering husband) quite a few times, so there might be a bit of prurient dwelling on, er, stretching her in the ways she liked to be stretched.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Figleaf said:


> Now there are *two * FFJ biopics?  I mean, once might be funny (though not the French one by the sound of it...) I just think, if only the _real_ singers of the day could receive such posthumous attention and wall to wall media coverage- though I don't know who we'd find to play them in a movie.


Who would make good subjects for biopics? Callas, of course. Nourrit - although that would involve operas the paying public hadn't heard of! Melba, maybe? Chaliapin? Caruso?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Here's the trailer to the Meryl Streep movie


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> Streep's doing the singing apparently- not surprisingly, for those who saw her in _Mamma Mia_! This was in an interview with the actress in the Sunday Times this morning:
> 
> _Streep, who had opera singing lessons in her youth, first heard a Foster Jenkins recording while studying at Yale School of Drama in the early 1970s. "It wasn't just that she was bad, but that she was bad with heart", she says, pointing out that Foster Jenkins was aspirational and terrible, moving and amusing. "She had such delight. And you could hear her preparation. You could hear her" - she mimics deep breaths- "getting ready to do the phrase, then coming in late. She sails through so much of it successfully- almost- then gets to the thing she really needs the breath for and runs out".
> 
> ...


Streep was interviewed, along with Hugh Grant, on the Graham Norton show last week, and I rather liked what she had to say about the movie being, in many ways, about aspiration. She commented that, when Jenkins sang, you can hear that she almost got it, that the will was there, but the voice let her down.

Let's face it, it is a good story, and one that lends itself perfectly to the media of film.

It has good credentials too. It was directed by Stephen Frears, who also directed *Philomena* and *The Queen*, neither of which movies could be said to have gone for sensationalism. I look forward to seeing it.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

SimonTemplar said:


> Who would make good subjects for biopics? Callas, of course. Nourrit - although that would involve operas the paying public hadn't heard of! Melba, maybe? Chaliapin? Caruso?


Well Zeffirelli has already done his Callas tribute with *Callas Forever*, an old style, sentimental biopic about something that never happened. It's a fictionlised account of Callas's last days in Paris.

Mary Garden might make a good biopic topic. By all accounts she had a very _colourful_ life, though apparently her autobiography, written when she was beginning to feel the effects of dementia, embellishes quite a bit. It's a cracking good read nonetheless.

Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich might make a good topic too, considering their rather problematic relationship with the Soviet government.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

SimonTemplar said:


> Who would make good subjects for biopics? Callas, of course. Nourrit - although that would involve operas the paying public hadn't heard of! Melba, maybe? Chaliapin? Caruso?


Chaliapin wrote an unusually frank autobiography which would dramatize very well. Titta Ruffo too- a vivid, gifted writer and a remarkable personality who arrived on the scene at a time of upheaval, paid the vocal price for too little training, and was the victim of Fascist political intrigues later on. Caruso's obviously had the Hollywood treatment (Mario Lanza as a singing waiter, which I don't think Caruso ever was!) but the excellent warts and all biography by Enrico Jr could make an excellent film, told from the son's perspective. Even Dorothy's highly romantic tear jerking memoir, a sort of May to December Romeo and Juliet, has a classic Hollywood aura about it and wouldn't require 'Caruso' to sing- like Elvis after him, the great tenor chose for a wife an inexperienced young woman without much culture or apparent interest in music. How about Sybil Sanderson, whose upper crust American background was straight out of an Edith Wharton novel or a painting by Sargent, and who became the toast of Paris and had doomed love affairs before dying tragically young of alcoholism? Maybe Francesco Tamagno (already portrayed by Mario Del Monaco in a Verdi biopic I haven't seen) who seems to have been quite the eccentric- obsessively frugal, a hoarder, no live-in girlfriends- and has an intriguing mystery about him in the form of an illegtimate daughter who was his constant companion, but whose mother's identity is still unknown. Ugo Piovano's book 'Otello Fu' has done the historical legwork. Or Tamagno's Otello co-star and enemy Victor Maurel, perhaps the most flamboyant personality of them all- a highly cinematic riches to rags story of a singer who rose to the top quickly, became Verdi's baritone in spite of an early vocal decline, had the usual scandalous love affairs and high society connections, and embarked on a number of quixotic projects which were ended abruptly by his creditors- Emma Calvé recalls escaping through a back window of the Theatre des Italiens with Maurel and as many costumes as they could carry, just as the bailiffs were coming in through the front. Though his writings are entertaining, the best stories are inevitably told by other people: James Huneker's humorous story of an aristocratic New Yorker who spent a large inheritance trying to find the perfect copy of a shirt collar he had seen on the baritone; Clifton Webb's gleeful account of Maurel's final fiasco, an off-Broadway flop based on the life of Napoleon starring the by then completely voiceless baritone and a number of his pupil/lovers; the touching story of his penurious final days told by his devoted friend Ruffo, mentioned above. In fact, the majority of the great singers seem to have been colorful, and those whose careers were parabola shaped (to borrow from the title of Ruffo's book) would make the best subjects of all, since presumably nobody wants to know the story of those who became successful, stayed successful, then enjoyed a happy retirement by the seaside and died at a ripe old age surrounded by children and grandchildren! The problem would not be lack of stories, but lack of the will and the resources to do those stories justice. Nourrit? Brilliant, tragic story, with the advantage that nobody knows exactly what he sounded like! Callas? Maybe not, insofar as her face and voice are still too well known to be convincingly impersonated, and the fans would rightly be up in arms about any poetic licence which deviated from the known facts of her career.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Streep was interviewed, along with Hugh Grant, on the Graham Norton show last week, and I rather liked what she had to say about the movie being, in many ways, about aspiration. She commented that, when Jenkins sang, you can hear that she almost got it, that the will was there, but the voice let her down.
> 
> Let's face it, it is a good story, and one that lends itself perfectly to the media of film.
> 
> It has good credentials too. It was directed by Stephen Frears, who also directed *Philomena* and *The Queen*, neither of which movies could be said to have gone for sensationalism. I look forward to seeing it.


'The Queen' was indeed a good film. I'm a republican, but I had to rush out and buy a green Barbour jacket on the strength of how Helen Mirren looked in one!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Figleaf said:


> 'The Queen' was indeed a good film. I'm a republican, but I had to rush out and buy a green Barbour jacket on the strength of how Helen Mirren looked in one!


Not as good as the Queen herself. Our Majesty was a very glamorous woman and still looks good at 90!


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Well Zeffirelli has already done his Callas tribute with *Callas Forever*, an old style, sentimental biopic about something that never happened. It's a fictionlised account of Callas's last days in Paris.
> 
> Mary Garden might make a good biopic topic. By all accounts she had a very _colourful_ life, though apparently her autobiography, written when she was beginning to feel the effects of dementia, embellishes quite a bit. It's a cracking good read nonetheless.
> 
> Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich might make a good topic too, considering their rather problematic relationship with the Soviet government.


Mary Garden's is a brilliant book. I think some of the 'embellished' sounding vignettes are the most cinematic parts of all: the drug addict boyfriend who hallucinated rats coming out of the bathtaps, the highly erotic description of a naked Lily Debussy on her hospital bed after a suicide attempt prompted by her husband's infatuation with Mary, etc. Have you read Blanche Arral's book? She went on the run after her husband was assassinated by the Russian mafia and ended up in a Turkish harem, where both the sultan and his father fell madly in love with her but allowed her to escape unmolested. It makes Mary Garden look positively tame!


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Not as good as the Queen herself. Our Majesty was a very glamorous woman and still looks good at 90!


Yes, especially that 'bulldog chewing a wasp' expression she pulls when watching some official entertainment or other. Pure sex appeal! 

Good wardrobe though, in a mother of the bride sort of way.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> Mary Garden's is a brilliant book. I think some of the 'embellished' sounding vignettes are the most cinematic parts of all: the drug addict boyfriend who hallucinated rats coming out of the bathtaps, the highly erotic description of a naked Lily Debussy on her hospital bed after a suicide attempt prompted by her husband's infatuation with Mary, etc. Have you read Blanche Arral's book? She went on the run after her husband was assassinated by the Russian mafia and ended up in a Turkish harem, where both the sultan and his father fell madly in love with her but allowed her to escape unmolested. It makes Mary Garden look positively tame!


Not one I know, but sounds like one I should :tiphat:


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Not one I know, but sounds like one I should :tiphat:












It's a great read!


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> Chaliapin wrote an unusually frank autobiography which would dramatize very well. Titta Ruffo too- a vivid, gifted writer and a remarkable personality who arrived on the scene at a time of upheaval, paid the vocal price for too little training, and was the victim of Fascist political intrigues later on. Caruso's obviously had the Hollywood treatment (Mario Lanza as a singing waiter, which I don't think Caruso ever was!) but the excellent warts and all biography by Enrico Jr could make an excellent film, told from the son's perspective. Even Dorothy's highly romantic tear jerking memoir, a sort of May to December Romeo and Juliet, has a classic Hollywood aura about it and wouldn't require 'Caruso' to sing- like Elvis after him, the great tenor chose for a wife an inexperienced young woman without much culture or apparent interest in music. How about Sybil Sanderson, whose upper crust American background was straight out of an Edith Wharton novel or a painting by Sargent, and who became the toast of Paris and had doomed love affairs before dying tragically young of alcoholism? Maybe Francesco Tamagno (already portrayed by Mario Del Monaco in a Verdi biopic I haven't seen) who seems to have been quite the eccentric- obsessively frugal, a hoarder, no live-in girlfriends- and has an intriguing mystery about him in the form of an illegtimate daughter who was his constant companion, but whose mother's identity is still unknown. Ugo Piovano's book 'Otello Fu' has done the historical legwork. Or Tamagno's Otello co-star and enemy Victor Maurel, perhaps the most flamboyant personality of them all- a highly cinematic riches to rags story of a singer who rose to the top quickly, became Verdi's baritone in spite of an early vocal decline, had the usual scandalous love affairs and high society connections, and embarked on a number of quixotic projects which were ended abruptly by his creditors- Emma Calvé recalls escaping through a back window of the Theatre des Italiens with Maurel and as many costumes as they could carry, just as the bailiffs were coming in through the front. Though his writings are entertaining, the best stories are inevitably told by other people: James Huneker's humorous story of an aristocratic New Yorker who spent a large inheritance trying to find the perfect copy of a shirt collar he had seen on the baritone; Clifton Webb's gleeful account of Maurel's final fiasco, an off-Broadway flop based on the life of Napoleon starring the by then completely voiceless baritone and a number of his pupil/lovers; the touching story of his penurious final days told by his devoted friend Ruffo, mentioned above. In fact, the majority of the great singers seem to have been colorful, and those whose careers were parabola shaped (to borrow from the title of Ruffo's book) would make the best subjects of all, since presumably nobody wants to know the story of those who became successful, stayed successful, then enjoyed a happy retirement by the seaside and died at a ripe old age surrounded by children and grandchildren! The problem would not be lack of stories, but lack of the will and the resources to do those stories justice. Nourrit? Brilliant, tragic story, with the advantage that nobody knows exactly what he sounded like! Callas? Maybe not, insofar as her face and voice are still too well known to be convincingly impersonated, and the fans would rightly be up in arms about any poetic licence which deviated from the known facts of her career.


All of these are great suggestions. Unfortunately I doubt anyone, apart form a few of us here on TC and thereabouts, would be in the least bit interested, which I suppose is a rather sad reflection on modern life.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

GregMitchell said:


> All of these are great suggestions. Unfortunately I doubt anyone, apart form a few of us here on TC and thereabouts, would be in the least bit interested, which I suppose is a rather sad reflection on modern life.


Opera is very much a minority interest. Always has been, probably. They did a biopic on Farinelli but it had little to do with the real singer. The problem is that si gets tend to be ordinary Joes who are blessed with greater tonsils than the rest of us. Callas would be an Nteresting subject for a warts and all biopic. But who would fund it?


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> All of these are great suggestions. Unfortunately I doubt anyone, apart form a few of us here on TC and thereabouts, would be in the least bit interested, which I suppose is a rather sad reflection on modern life.


Yes, it's a pity, but I suspect you are right. Amazon reviews of the Clifton Webb autobiography express disappointment that it's not about Hollywood in the 30s and 40s, but rather concerned with the showbiz world of an earlier time when Webb was an aspiring operatic baritone. Personally I was intrigued by the actor's account of his mother's dalliance with the tenor Edoardo Garbin and Webb's own brief incarceration for non payment of his teacher Maurel's fees (hence the hilariously vindictive dissection of the great baritone's foibles and the schadenfreude over the _Purple Road_ fiasco in Atlantic City) but unless one is a Verdi scholar or an early recordings anorak, these names don't mean much any more.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Amazing how we love biopics about people who aspired but ended up heroic failures. I saw Eddie the Eagle, about the ski-jumper who came last in the Olympics but became a national hero because he was a great trier. Perhaps it's because we can identify with them rather than the phenomenally talented people who often entertain us.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Opera is very much a minority interest. Always has been, probably. They did a biopic on Farinelli but it had little to do with the real singer. The problem is that si gets tend to be ordinary Joes who are blessed with greater tonsils than the rest of us. Callas would be an Nteresting subject for a warts and all biopic. But who would fund it?


There might well be some 'ordinary Joes with great voices', but I very much think that the great singers tend to have outsize personalities. The ones who in spite of this would make lousy subjects for a conventional biopic are those with ascetic lifestyles (Arral mentions her colleague Lucien Fugere, who lived with his brother, never went to parties and was an advocate of 'early to bed, early to rise' as a way of ensuring vocal longevity) or those whose careers were meteroric but ended abruptly and who didn't even have the dramatic sense to die immediately of a broken heart (e.g. Cornelie Falcon who lived for decades after an early vocal decline and the trauma of Nourrit's death, or Emile Scaramberg who went back to Besançon and taught singing for thirty years after some mysterious malady or accident ended his career at the Opéra).

I haven't seen 'Farinelli' yet, but I remember most of the press coverage was concerned with the technological challenge of recreating the castrato voice by digitally manipulating recordings of a countertenor, with rather unimpressive results. Moreschi would be a good subject, no? Though the same problem of who would do the singing applies, unless it could be got around with an 'offstage' setting- which may or may not be interesting in its own right, of course. Much depends on the quality of the writing.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Figleaf said:


> There might well be some 'ordinary Joes with great voices', but I very much think that the great singers tend to have outsize personalities. The ones who in spite of this would make lousy subjects for a conventional biopic are those with ascetic lifestyles (Arral mentions her colleague Lucien Fugere, who lived with his brother, never went to parties and was an advocate of 'early to bed, early to rise' as a way of ensuring vocal longevity) or those whose careers were meteroric but ended abruptly and who didn't even have the dramatic sense to die immediately of a broken heart (e.g. Cornelie Falcon who lived for decades after an early vocal decline and the trauma of Nourrit's death, or Emile Scaramberg who went back to Besançon and taught singing for thirty years after some mysterious malady or accident ended his career at the Opéra).
> 
> I haven't seen 'Farinelli' yet, but I remember most of the press coverage was concerned with the technological challenge of recreating the castrato voice by digitally manipulating recordings of a countertenor, with rather unimpressive results. Moreschi would be a good subject, no? Though the same problem of who would do the singing applies, unless it could be got around with an 'offstage' setting- which may or may not be interesting in its own right, of course. Much depends on the quality of the writing.


Giuditta Pasta, who created Norma, Anna Bolena, and Amina in *La Sonnambula* and was renowned for the emotional impact of her performances, also went on singing long after her voice had gone into decline. Another great singer, Pauline Viardot, was taken to see one of her last performances. Turning to her companion she said, "You're right, it's a wreck of a voice, but it's like Da Vinci's _The Last Supper_, a wreck of a painting, but still the greatest painting in the world".

Don't you just love anecdotes like that?


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Giuditta Pasta, who created Norma, Anna Bolena, and Amina in *La Sonnambula* and was renowned for the emotional impact of her performances, also went on singing long after her voice had gone into decline. Another great singer, Pauline Viardot, was taken to see one of her last performances. Turning to her companion she said, "You're right, it's a wreck of a voice, but it's like Da Vinci's _The Last Supper_, a wreck of a painting, but still the greatest painting in the world".
> 
> Don't you just love anecdotes like that?


Yes, those are great stories! There's something especially poignant about those singers who lived before sound recording was a possibility, and whose art really was ephemeral- though I suppose Pasta lives on in the roles written for her, and Viardot in the songs she composed.

Off topic: if you're ever in Oxford, try to see the Last Supper that hangs in the chapel at Magdalen (I assume it's still there). It's in much better nick than the original, and the head of Christ is said to have been painted by Leonardo himself.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Figleaf said:


> *I haven't seen 'Farinelli' yet, but I remember most of the press coverage was concerned with the technological challenge of recreating the castrato voice by digitally manipulating recordings of a countertenor, with rather unimpressive results.* Moreschi would be a good subject, no? Though the same problem of who would do the singing applies, unless it could be got around with an 'offstage' setting- which may or may not be interesting in its own right, of course. Much depends on the quality of the writing.


I thought this was by far the most interesting part of the movie


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

DavidA said:


> I thought this was by far the most interesting part of the movie


Maybe for sound engineers!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Figleaf said:


> Maybe for sound engineers!


I actually thought the sound of the voice was pretty well done. It was also fascinating to watch the operatic performances until they got too melodramatic with flashbacks of his castration.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Figleaf said:


> 'The Queen' was indeed a good film. I'm a republican, but I had to rush out and buy a green Barbour jacket on the strength of how Helen Mirren looked in one!


And Prince Philip is played by Oliver Cromwell.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

DavidA said:


> I actually thought the sound of the voice was pretty well done. It was also fascinating to watch the operatic performances until they got too melodramatic with flashbacks of his castration.


It wasn't that it was badly done from a sound engineering stsndpoint. It just didn't sound like a castrato voice, or- more seriously perhaps- a singer of Farinelli's stature.

The castration flashbacks sound horrific.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Figleaf said:


> It wasn't that it was badly done from a sound engineering stsndpoint. It just didn't sound like a castrato voice, or- more seriously perhaps- a singer of Farinelli's stature.
> 
> The castration flashbacks sound horrific.


The problem is we don't really know what a castrato sounded like. We do have the recording of Moreschi right at the end of his life but how representative that is of the sound (coupled with the ancient recording) is anyone's guess. Obviously from contemporary reports Farinelli had an incredible pipe (and was incredibly clumsy around the stage too - a result of castration) but just how he sounded is a mystery of time.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

DavidA said:


> The problem is we don't really know what a castrato sounded like. We do have the recording of Moreschi right at the end of his life but how representative that is of the sound (coupled with the ancient recording) is anyone's guess. Obviously from contemporary reports Farinelli had an incredible pipe (and was incredibly clumsy around the stage too - a result of castration) but just how he sounded is a mystery of time.


The point I was trying to make is that one can't recreate a great voice using a couple of rather ordinary voices (let alone ones that don't even belong to the same voice type) and some digital manipulation. Admittedly I don't think anyone made these sort of claims for 'Farinelli', but the illusion has to be good enough for the suspension of disbelief to be possible, and I don't think they managed it. Indeed, it's a fair point that Moreschi's very striking sound (along with those of the other castrati distantly heard on the first recordings of the Sistine Chapel choir) might have owed no more to his surgical operation than to the particular training he received, which may have had little to do with that of the operatic castrati (and which should probably have concentrated on intonation a bit more...) Plus, Moreschi may have been an idiosyncratic singer: no doubt not all castrati sounded much like he did, just as not all female sopranos sound like Emma Calvé nor all tenors like Agustarello Affre, to name two examples of highly individual singers born in 1858, the same year as the Last Castrato. The basic problem is that 'Farinelli' has a weak breathy countertenor sound, whereas Moreschi's is powerful, pure, ethereal, and- paradoxically- _virile_ in comparison with his weedy falsettist successors. The only thing the 'Angel of Rome' has in common with 'Farinelli' is lack of legato!


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

Figleaf' s post #16 is very impressive.

I may add *Lillian Nordica*. The story of her life is quite operatic and cinematic. Born native American, she then became the first American at Bayreuth. Her first husband was her cousin, who disappeared in a mysterious balloon accident (from England to France). Her second husband was the Hungarian singer Zoltan Dome, who instilled in her the love for Hungarian music (her finest recording is definitely La Grange Aria from _Hunyadi Laszlo_ by the famous Hungarian composer Ferenc Erkel). They divorced due to his infidelity. Her third marriage was with a wealthy business man, and again it was unhappy for her. On her very last tour, her ship wrecked into a coral reef; she remained there for days, suffered from pneumonia. She failed to recover and died shortly after. And now? It was rumored that her spirit haunts a Auditorium , dedicated to her, at University of Maine in Farmington.

Myths and legends aside, she is wonderful singer. As some early Wagnerian sopranos, she sung his music with the Italian bel canto style. The voice is huge but has agility.






Bonus: Local ghostbusters chasing after Madame Nordica !!!






*Olive Fremstad*, one of the reigning Wagnerian divas at the Met right after Nordica, inspired the novel _"The Song of the Lark"_ by the famed writer Willa Cather. It is a story about American determination: a peasant girl overcomes many obstacles and claws her way up the ladder of success. Despite being framed as a story about Fremstad, the book is more like Cather's autobiography.

I would also make a movie about Aristotle Onassis. Everyone knows how he ruined Maria Callas. But fewer would know that earlier in his life he did the same thing with *Claudia Muzio*, when she was active at Buenos Aires. Well, that guy screwed two La Divinas of two generations! The whole affairs can be made into a typical Hollywood-style, parallel-stories movie.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

They should have used Ewa Podles voice and call it a day. Big, beautiful, androgynous, and a staggering range.I think her voice or Marilyn Horne in her heyday would have been similar to a castrato in power, beauty and dexterity.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

silentio said:


> Figleaf' s post #16 is very impressive.
> 
> I may add *Lillian Nordica*. The story of her life is quite operatic and cinematic. Born native American, she then became the first American at Bayreuth. Her first husband was her cousin, who disappeared in a mysterious balloon accident (from England to France). Her second husband was the Hungarian singer Zoltan Dome, who instilled in her the love for Hungarian music (her finest recording is definitely La Grange Aria from _Hunyadi Laszlo_ by the famous Hungarian composer Ferenc Erkel). They divorced due to his infidelity. Her third marriage was with a wealthy business man, and again it was unhappy for her. On her very last tour, her ship wrecked into a coral reef; she remained there for days, suffered from pneumonia. She failed to recover and died shortly after. And now? It was rumored that her spirit haunts a Auditorium , dedicated to her, at University of Maine in Farmington.
> 
> ...


With what Onassis was rumored to possess, he could have turned the many men he bedded into sopranos. I hope that is not too much for this board. He was ugly, but possessed an immense charisma and "talent" to back it up, according to sources I have perused. Callas got what she wanted out of the affair: he made her feel like a woman, something she never had time for during her vocal career period. How could someone so romantic in her performances not desire that flame in her real life as well. Ari gave that to her.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> They should have used Ewa Podles voice and call it a day. Big, beautiful, androgynous, and a staggering range.I think her voice or Marilyn Horne in her heyday would have been similar to a castrato in power, beauty and dexterity.


I agree that a first class woman singer would have been much better, if it's possible to persuade a diva to play the role of a castrated man! I knew the singing in _Farinelli_ would be disappointing when I heard that Derek Lee Ragin was involved: a CD of castrato arias I bought in the late 90s featured about half a dozen contemporary countertenors, and I remember that Ragin struck me as the least accomplished of them. The best in this formidably difficult repertoire was Jochen Kowalski, but even he had nothing like the vocal charisma one would imagine Farinelli possessed.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

I've just seen the Meryl Streep movie. It's a delight - funny, warm, and ultimately rather sweet. Streep and Hugh Grant (when did he last act?) are in fine form, and Cosme McMion is channelling Leo Bloom. Weirdly, it's set in New York but most of the cast is British - including Paola Dionisotti, Allan Corduner and David Haig.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SimonTemplar said:


> I've just seen the Meryl Streep movie. It's a delight - funny, warm, and ultimately rather sweet. Streep and Hugh Grant (when did he last act?) are in fine form, and Cosme McMion is channelling Leo Bloom. Weirdly, it's set in New York but most of the cast is British - including Paola Dionisotti, Allan Corduner and David Haig.


Just seen it too. Agree with above verdict. Florence Foster Jenkins was surely the most extraordinary singer to appear at Carnegie Hall. Mind you, in our lifetime we've had a similar phenomenon in the the excruciating singing in the movie Momma Mia!

Jenkins movie is tastefully done and has wonderful performances from Street and Grant.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Based on these reviews, I guess I'll have to see it. I've always enjoyed Streep's skill at putting on accents, mannerisms, and looks. She's a lot like Laurence Olivier that way: sometimes the craft calls attention to itself, but there's never an uninteresting moment.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Just seen it too. Agree with above verdict. Florence Foster Jenkins was surely the most extraordinary singer to appear at Carnegie Hall. Mind you, in our lifetime we've had a similar phenomenon in the the excruciating singing in the movie Momma Mia!
> 
> Jenkins movie is tastefully done and has wonderful performances from Street and Grant.


I am convinced , reviews are raving in our papers, so next weekend :tiphat:


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## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I contemplate this project with apprehension. Most people will be unacquainted with the real Florence Foster Jenkins, will not have heard her "sing," and will have to be persuaded by the presence of Ms. Streep and some fancy publicity to go and see the movie. Jenkins was a woman of serious musical ambitions who began as a child prodigy pianist and eventually turned to singing. Unfortunately she had a dreadful voice and little sense of pitch or rhythm (one wonders how she played the piano in concert without at least the latter), and only her great wealth allowed her to buy performance venues and even to get to Carnegie Hall at the age of 76. Her recordings are hilarious to listen to, but in truth she was a deluded and tragic woman. I can only wonder how the film will portray the ridiculousness of her singing, which no one would listen to now except for laughs (will Streep be able to mimic her singing, or will it be dubbed?), and at the same time reveal the pathos of a woman whose limitless money allowed her to go on thinking, until near the end of her life, that she was doing something of value.
> 
> I'm really surprised that the film is being made at all. I suppose I'll see it sometime, but I'm afraid it might be hard to laugh at her horrid singing once I've seen the sad life behind it.


I just watched the film last night. I must say it is faithful to these facts (with minor changes here and there) but it did successfully portray her as she is supposed to be: a true music lover, a talented pianist (eventually unable to play due to nerve damage from syphilis and whatnot) and someone who desperately wanted to sing and (unsuccessfully) took singing lessons. It also reveals the details of her past life quite accurately (marriage to Dr Jenkins, syphilis, her family background etc) and her relationships with famous musicians of that period.

One thing that I'm not sure about is that the film assumes Florence genuinely thought she could sing and it was her Husband St.Clair Bayfield who managed to keep the critics at bay and made sure those who attend the performances were carefully selected etc. But it was not the case. Whether she knew she couldn't sing or not was and still is open to discussion.
But it was exactly that tragic aspect that made the film work. So I'm not complaining.

I didn't like that they cast Aida Garifullina as Lily Pons. And they made her sing lakmé in a lower key! She is a pretty woman with a pretty lyric voice but she has nothing to do with Pons.

Meryl Streep did and excellent job. As did Hugh Grant as Bayfield and Simon Helberg as McMoon. There were a lot of funny moments. Toscanini shows up too and he looks exactly like him which I found amusing.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Tuoksu said:


> I just watched the film last night. I must say it is faithful to these facts (with minor changes here and there) but it did successfully portray her as she is supposed to be: a true music lover, a talented pianist (eventually unable to play due to nerve damage from syphilis and whatnot) and someone who desperately wanted to sing and (unsuccessfully) took singing lessons. It also reveals the details of her past life quite accurately (marriage to Dr Jenkins, syphilis, her family background etc) and her relationships with famous musicians of that period.
> 
> One thing that I'm not sure about is that the film assumes Florence genuinely thought she could sing and it was her Husband St.Clair Bayfield who managed to keep the critics at bay and made sure those who attend the performances were carefully selected etc. But it was not the case. Whether she knew she couldn't sing or not was and still is open to discussion.
> But it was exactly that tragic aspect that made the film work. So I'm not complaining.
> ...


I've noticed that also, however not one single word mention in all reviews.
( as far I as could find them)


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## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

I wonder if anyone has seen Fellini's E La Nave Va?


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Tuoksu said:


> I wonder if anyone has seen Fellini's E La Nave Va?


I wish I could find one for a reasonable price.


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## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

Pugg said:


> I wish I could find one for a reasonable price.


I hope you do. It's totally worth it. I don't intend to spoil but it's about the funeral of a legendary Opera Singer (fictional Soprano, but it's totally an indirect tribute to Maria Callas if you ask me) on a ship full of wealthy people and opera singers, as well as a journalist. Aboard is a jealous Soprano voiced by Mara Zampieri. 
The film is very interesting and I think it's something every Opera fan should watch.


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## Tuoksu (Sep 3, 2015)

I found an excerpt on youtube (on of the best scenes) if anyone's interested. Opera sing-off in the engine room  Ignore the Russian overdub.


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