Having studied Wagner’s Ring in 10th grade, I was quite ready for Anna when I discovered her in grad school. She lived in Yardley, PA for a while, so we got to see her twice at McCarter theater in Princeton during several of her farewell tours.
One thing she did not on any of the three CDs of hers I own is a version of Nabucco, by Verdi I believe. She started by saying that it always got cancelled - turns out that the reason, according to her, was that a late scene involved Nabucco’s daughter putting on his crown, and companies discovered, during dress rehearsal, that it fell down right over her eyes.
And its really really funny
when you’ve lots and lots of money
to be horrible to those with none.
By one of those incredible coincidences that people make too much of, I just found her autobiography in a book sale yesterday. At $1.00, it was quite a bargain. Wonder if they would have charged more if they had known?
I have seen a little of one of Anna’s Farewell Tours on the Arts Channel – the one that plays bits and pieces of all kinds of art 24 hours a day. She was absolutely hysterical! I have one of her CDs set aside in my Save Until Later section at Amazon.
It’s been a long time since I saw her but when I did she only commented on Nabucco, not did it, saying that there were three crown stitches in the space of a couple bars and nobody could find a mezzo-soprano and a couple tenors all with the same size head.
She did do the generic Gilbert & Sullivan and the Ring cycle. I remember thinking, “If real opera was like this, I’d watch it!”
Wow. On the same day that I introduce her work to friend (who loved it) I discover that not only has she just died but she lived only a few hours drive away from me.
Let us not bemoan the loss of the opera world’s clown princess, for she managed one of the greatest coups a diva of her stature can achieve – she outlived her critics.
Hats off (including the silly ones) to the divine Ms. Russell!