“For what a two-bedroom apartment costs here, you can get a house with a pool in Arizona.”Opera Chic likes Madelyn Monti (she has now ceased using her first husband's last name and went back to her maiden name) for so many reasons.
Among them:
a) She's a fellow American girl in MilanWe could live without the giant image of the Scala's stage smack in the middle of the living room, but then it's just us.
b) We have friends who had the pleasure to hear her sing a few years ago when her career was in full bloom -- she's more a mom than a fulltime singer now, and bless her for that -- and they still praise the beauty of her voice and her Italian diction (she managed to extract an unusually rave review from the hardest-to-please newspaper critic here)
c) She's big on Mascagni and Cilea, those unfashionable, underrated geniuses Opera Chic is so fond of
d) The rare example of discretion she gave by staying classily silent, on the record and off, right after her old mentor and teacher and colleague and friend, Luciano Pavarotti, passed away last Summer.
And she's right, the real estate here is not only insanely priced, but you seldom get what you paid for (even if a sweet big via Mascagni apartment such as hers and her husband's is still pretty cool, however).