breakfast at murrayfield

So, Frèngo thinks Daniela Dessì can’t sing his Violetta on the opening night at Teatro dell’Opera — basically because she’s not stick-insect thin, to cut a long story short.

Shame though she can actually sing the role as she has a rich, beautiful voice (you can see and hear her singing Puccini’s “Vissi d’arte” in the video posted above), and shame also that he forgot Violetta is not *his* at all, but Giuseppe Verdi’s, and I can’t remember reading that Verdi ever said Violetta has to be anorexic or something anywhere.

I’m not saying that Cinzia Forte or Myrto Papatanasiu aren’t worth it, of course, they surely are and apologies to them about all this, because it’s not their fault at all — still if an opera house hires Fabio Armiliato and Daniela Dessì to sing together and goes on promoting the event as “Dessì e Armiliato nella TRAVIATA di Zeffirelli diretta da Gelmetti“, then people obviously want to see and hear Armiliato & Dessì. Makes sense, don’t you think?

So some opera lovers have set up a petition to ask Opera di Roma to bring Daniela Dessì back.

I’m not sure the petition will work, it probably won’t, still it’s about time Teatro dell’Opera gains some credibility back as an opera house and not as a playhouse for elderly stage directors, letting people who can sing do their job and putting an end to being the doormat of someone who hires or fires singers only on behalf of their size, not caring if they can actually sing — which, may I remind you, is what opera singers are supposed to do in the first place.

Not to mention that Mr. Zeffirelli is contradicting himself in the dumbest way: many, many years ago he staged a wonderful Lucia di Lammermoor, starring La Stupenda, Dame Joan Sutherland, who has the graciousness all in her voice but, let’s face it, isn’t and wasn’t exactly a sylph — she’s very tall and has an important bosom. Not to mention her chin! In his own words, there was “everything wrong” in her looks. Yet he didn’t bother about that, he “completely forgot about her looks” because of her voice, and that was the clever thing to do as that one ended up being the most wonderful rendition of Lucia di Lammermoor to these days, if you ask me.

So why can’t he be equally open-minded towards Mrs. Dessì?