This from the AP:
MILAN, Italy - Tenor Roberto Alagna marched off the stage at La Scala when the audience booed him during the second performance of Franco Zeffirelli's "Aida." He was replaced seconds later by his understudy, who rushed on wearing jeans.
"I do not deserve this kind of reception," Alagna told La Repubblica newspaper after his early exit from Saturday night's performance.
"What else could I do?" Alagna said in an interview Monday with Italy's Tg5 news. "Did I have to stay there ... until my voice broke?"
And this from ME:
According to Wikipedia (the "truthiest" source of information), Alagna was a busker turned self-taught opera singer who became an international opera celebrity in the 90s. And he's a diva in every sense of the word. I'm not sure why this sort of behavior fascinates me so. I think it's tied into my love of unreliable narrators, and there is nothing more unreliable than somebody narrating their own story (see also Blogs). Outbursts of ego like this show the cracks in the persona. M. Night Shyamalan exhibits some of the same tendencies. And so does Jerry Lewis when he gets serious. And it's always fascinating.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Few things are more fascinating than Jerry Lewis taking himself seriously. Unless it's Jerry Lewis trying, unsuccessfully, to be funny.
I agree with the first part of your statement, but not the second. When he was first starting out with Dean Martin, their nightclub routines had the reputation of being spontaneous and hilarious, which was slow to transition to movies and TV but eventually did make it there. You should know, also, that at the height of their popularity, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin were bigger than the Beatles. Will Ferrell and Sasha Baron Cohen and [name your favorite comedy star] cannot come close to competing with Jerry Lewis at his height. But they are funnier than Shymalan.
I know all that. I've just never appreciated his style of humor. Which, of course, is not to say that others shouldn't.
Post a Comment