Sondra hosted the Metropolitan Opera HD broadcast of La Fanciulla del West on Saturday, and it was fairly hilarious. Here are the illegal photos I took at the Ziegfeld Theater. I didn’t take any of the actual production, so perhaps this won’t result in an embarrassing moment in which an artist’s own publicist gets in trouble with her publicist colleagues for using the wrong photos.
Here she is with Deborah Voigt (who was cute cute cute!) and Marcello Giordani:
And here she is outside with the horse trainers (!):
The biggest laughs at the Ziegfeld on Saturday came when every Italian man Sondra interviewed–including the conductor–said he watched John Wayne movies and wanted to be a cowboy when he was little.
I bring all this up not simply to brag about my client (though there is that) or to plug her Tosca run at the Met (though there’s that, too – video here), but to point you to an LA Times’ “Culture Monster” piece about Sondra’s hosting duties. This part I liked especially:
Saturday at the HD Broadcast of Puccini’s “Fanciulla del West,”
Sondra Radvanovsky will be making a very 21st century Met debut (or
re-debut).The American soprano makes her debut as the on-air host of the Met’s
HD broadcast. The HD host is essentially the show’s Ryan Seacrest. But
in a shrewd move, Peter Gelb didn’t hire a TV personality for the gig
when the broadcast series began four years ago. Instead, he tapped
telegenic stars from the opera world like Plácido Domingo and Renée
Fleming. (In contrast, PBS telecasts were for years hosted by Garrick
Utley of NBC, and Sunday’s LA Phil Live broadcast is hosted by Vanessa
Williams.)
In an era in which we all complain that TV shows won’t have classical musicians on as guests, it is interesting that the classical organizations themselves are the first to jump to find a celebrity to do the job when an opportunity to be seen on screens worldwide arises. When your own stars host, they can do things like refuse Fairway pie when it’s offered by the props master because they’re “keeping my girlish figure to sing Tosca on Monday!” (Having finished my Junior Mints and Coke, I wishing some nice props master would come by and offer me some pie.) And poof! Free Tosca preview. If the media won’t let us get to know the Met leading men and women, the Met will do it through their own media outlets.
More on this tomorrow, because as thrilled as I’m sure Sondra would be if I wore my Dartmouth sweatpants and Lululemon* hoodie to her big premiere tonight, I should probably change. I am fascinated, though, by the LA Philharmonic’s arrival on the big screen yesterday. I thought classical musicians should be heard and not seen?
*She actually loves Lululemon and would wear it as Tosca if she could.
The Met broadcasts hosted by opera stars are great! But, in addition to those, how about cross-disciplinary hosting of opera broadcasts? For example I once read (perhaps in an interview) that Helene Grimaud likes opera because of its completeness as an art form. As articulate, informed, and insightful as she is, perhaps it might be interesting if she were to host a broadcast (if her schedule would allow it), let’s say, of a work by a composer she admires, has recently recorded (eg, Berg), or otherwise feels a connection to. Or, maybe an opera starring a singer she has collaborated with? Just an idea…I think cross-collaboration in general among musicians (including composers on your roster) could be really interesting, athough I doubt it would ever happen with an HD or radio broadcast…