Cinderella or Rossini's La Cenerentola bel canto to be simulcast live from the Met May 9

Cinderella or La Cenerentola will not only be made over into The Golden Slipper for Berkeley Opera but will also be broadcast live in grand opera tradition at the Met. The Met will simulcast La Cenerentola to Century theaters the morning of May 9.

Here is Latvian Elina Garanca singing La Cenerentola’s Nacqui all'affanno.  

According to the Met website, Elina Garanca portrays another Rossini charmer in this bel canto Cinderella story. Lawrence Brownlee is her Prince Charming. Veteran baritone Alessandro Corbelli demonstrates his impeccable comic timing to match the gravitas of Met favorite John Relyea.
Conductor: Maurizio Benini

Elina has a new album out, Bel Canto.

Here’s Elina with Anna Netrebko in Tales of Hoffman’s Barcarolle, which Anna sings on her new CD Souvenirs.  

It’s spring, it’s young love, it’s fantasy. Nevertheless to me a realistic Cinderella story is Diane Keaton in the film Something’s Gotta Give, the 2003 romantic comedy with Jack Nicholson. Romance was a thing of the past for the writer Diane. She ends up having a fling with much younger Keannu Reeves, a doctor, before settling in with Jack Nicholson, his patient.  Newfound love gave her a whole new way of walking.

Reminds me, when I worked at WLAE TV in New Orleans, the lighting designer called me Cinders.  Not because I was smouldering. 

Speaking of Cinderfellas, I got a nice note from friends of Jeremy Galyon.

After his Adler Fellowship at SFO, this TDH (tall dark and handsome) is enjoying his debut year at the Met. He appeared in the first HD simulcast this year, La Sonnambula with Natalie Dessay. His friend emailed March 30.  She says a bunch of singing friends from his home state of Pennsylvania gathered to see Jeremy debut:

Cheryl Tubio:

So Jeremy should be making the grade at Barihunks. For more Cinderfellas there is this goofy website out of the San Francisco Bay Area which I discovered while featuring Greer Grimsley. It’s a site of great looking singers, actually of enormous talent, and as the author says he hopes with a limited range, say F to F.

In any event, Greer won’t be back to SFO until October for Salome, similarly fellow barihunk (I did not coin this phrase, I just use what’s already there) Dmitri will appear just before that as Count di Luna in Il Trovatore at SFO, September 11 through October 6.

In closing and just for fun, here’s Elina singing Scheherazade, an Arabian tale of a royal wife who kept herself alive by spinning exciting tales.  Each night would end on a cliffhanger thus the king would spare her another 24 hours . . . long enough to come up with another blog, I mean, tale . . . see ya'll tomorrow, possums.

Meanwhile.  Here is the statue with which Baghdaddies honor Scheherazade in Baghdad and as featured by the New York Times.

For more info:  www.BerkeleyOpera.org, www.SFOpera.com, The Met Live, Century Theaters

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