Opera Chic

At Sanremo, you are all losers winn4rs!!

The judgement of the 57th Sanremo Festival has been finalized, and first place was handed to Simone Cristicchi (pictured above) for singing/rapping "ti regalero' una rosa". For those curious, Youtube link here. 

Piero Mazzocchetti also worked it hard this past week, and won third place for his presentation of "Schiavo d'Amore" (Youtube link here), which was song originally written for Roberto Alagna.

And then we heard that, um, whaaaa........zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

No Geneva Convention Allowed: Hell Is Sanremo

Imagine dying and going to a place where particularly bad episodes of American Idol are on 24 hours a day, for all eternity.

Well, that's Paradise.

Hell is not other people, Hell is Festival di Sanremo. And I am in Hell.

Opera Chic -- so that you don't have to -- is trying to watch as much as she can of the whole sorry singing mess (ie, about 10 minutes a night, but YouTube helps).

In a nutshell: it's the 30 lamest singers in Italy, fighting each other to the death in a Eurovision-style (actually the formula was born at Sanremo and exported to Eurovision), 5 nights of nightmare. The TV audience at home votes via txt message or whatever. On Saturday night, an especially bad singer wins.

Suffice to say that these two dorks, apparently, have a standing chance of winning the Festival -- they're a tuneless, voiceless duo where only one remotely even tries to sing and the other isn't even that cute. Italian teenagers apparently go nuts for the two pimply-faced Roman twentysomethings -- they're emo + Peter Gabriel on a morphine drip, so bad that their record company enlisted Nelly "Sono In Retardo" Furtado to accompany them in a trio that is as ill-advised as it sounds, AND SHE MANAGED TO MAKE THE SONG BETTER.

Appropriately, they're named "Zero Assoluto", Absolute Zero. We give them a "0", and get us an Absolut, please (Opera Chic is partial to Grey Goose, but whatevs).

Another catastrophically bad specimen we've had to endure is this lady -- a weird, dragqueenerrific Cabaret/Lounge Singer/TripHop act whose only impressive talent seems to be the ability to solicit catty comments (unprintable here) by Opera Chic's friends for her Cirque De Amneris looks and weirdykins unibrow.

Here she is.

Tomorrow night, then, the "Finale", and the winners. I'll have to watch.

Now I really need a drink.

Mazzocchetti is all like, "TOP THAT, ALAGNA!"

Opera Chic was busy re-reading Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (löl ich bin eine löllercoaster löl) when a sms came ringing on her Samsung BlackJack to quickly turn the SKY satellite to Rai Uno.

Oh gawd.

I had tried to forget: The Sanremo Festival had started this evening! There on the screen, dressed all in black, was the Roberto Alagna Sanremo replacement Mr. Piero Mazzocchetti, belting-out the song that was originally commissioned for the Aida-walk-off tenor to premiere live, "Schiavo d'Amore".

   

Mazzocchetti, one of the twenty other singers currently crooning lame Italian pop at the 57th Sanremo Festival, deftly premiered the song a little while ago, which was promised to be sung by Alagna before the predictable cancellation on January 7, 2007.

Although many Milanese have wiped their hands of Alagna forever after his Aida walk-off, we all agree that at least Alagna saved his last, dying shred of dignity by cancelling participation in the painfully lame Sanremo.

Also, like Shannen Doherty and Paris Hilton before him, one of Mazzocchetti eyes are slowly fighting their way off his face. That is all.

Alagna's Replacement (NOT FRACC-OMBI)

When he left Teatro alla Scala's stage in a huff because the loggionisti had dared boo him, Roberto Alagna was replaced (in supercrazy circumstances that Opera Chic described here) by tenor Antonello Palombi.

Now that the Wiener Staatsoper has not agreed to enable the tenor's crazy cross-over plan (travelling to Sanremo, close to the Italian/French border, on the day before his Manon la prima in Vienna, to take part in super lame Sanremo pop music festival), Opera Chic is honored to announce thet Roberto Alagna's replacement in Sanremo will be...

PIERO MAZZOCCHETTI!

WHO?

Exactly...

A 28-year-old Italian singer unknown here, but apparently popular among the Italian immigrant community in Germany, Mazzocchetti will sing Schiavo d'Amore (aka "Slave to Love"), the very song that Sanremo General Manager and MC, Pippo Baudo, had commissioned via two Italian songwriters specifically for Roberto Alagna.

Let's have a listen to Alagna's replacement, shall we?

NO U

U R TEH SUPARSTAR!

BREAKING NEWS! ALAGNA OUT OF SANREMO FESTIVAL

BREAKING ALAGNA NEWS! PLEASE CREDIT OPERA CHIC!

Opera Chic has just learned that Roberto Alagna has bowed-out of his upcoming appearance at the Sanremo festival.

More in a sec...

vvvvvv UPDATE vvvvvv

Link here, which is Pippo Baudo's official roll-call for the Sanremo festival, and doesn't mention Alagna. Go on: Control+F for the "A-word". Good luck finding it! 

In addition to the entire cast/crew of the recent La Scala Aida, Alagna has clearly burned his existing bridges with Pippo "ex-husband of Katia Ricciarelli who beats-up hecklers outside of the opera house" Baudo, Director and M.C. of the entire Sanremo Festival. Alagna has also burned his bridges with songwriters Guido Morra and Maurizio Fabrizio, who specifically wrote Alagna an original song ("Schiavo d'Amore") that he was supposed to live-debut at the festival.

The affair comes down purely to scheduling, which Alagna flubbed, and just doesn't have capacity for.

His opening night at the Vienna Staatsoper for Massenet’s Manon is on Saturday, March 3, 2007, which is coincidentally the climax and closing-night of the Sanremo festival. Therefore, the only feasible slot for Alagna's Sanremo appearance would have been on Friday, March 2, 2007, which is designated for all the super-stars.

One can only guess that Vienna was all like AW HELL NAW when they realized that Alagna wouldn't be present for the final, general rehearsal the night before their Manon la prima.

Can someone gift this boy a filo-fax or something?

IMAGE MACRO TIME!!!

It is important to remember that Alagna was the one who asked Baudo to appear in the 2007 Sanremo Festival. NOT the other way around. Baudo's old quote states:

"'Esprimo grande solidarieta' nei confronti del tenore Alberto Alagna per quanto accaduto alla Scala. Confermo che Alagna mi ha chiesto di partecipare al prossimo Festival. [Trans: I confirm that Alagna asked me to participate in the next Festival] E' una candidatura eccezionale che dara' prestigio internazionale alla manifestazione"'

ALAGNA! What lies are these?!

D-Day for Alagna's Sanremo Decision

One of the most bizarre moments in the off-the-charts bizarre Roberto Alagna saga, i.e. Alagna's apparent plan to sing a pop song at the horribly lowbrow pop music Sanremo festival will be confirmed in the next few hours, so stay tuned for more breaking news tomorrow.

Now, even if you blind yourself to the obvious lameness of the Festival itself -- no rational opera star of Alagna's stature would appear there unless they willfully decide to jump that crossover shark, like, 4evar -- Alagna's problem is that he has, for the same week in March, a slightly more pressing engagement: he's also scheduled to appear at the Wiener Staatsoper for la prima of Massenet’s Manon, as Opera Chic reported here and here.

Hmmmm. Tough decision there. As a "super-star" lol, Alagna would obviously be asked by the Sanremo producers to appear on the super-popular slot for the evening of Saturday, March 3, 2007, live, smack in the middle of prime time.

However, that is the opening night of the Vienna Manon. It seems as if our good ol' Sicilian boy has overbooked himself (again), and will either piss-off the Viennese or the Sanremesi. As Opera Chic reported last month:

Interviewer: “You accepted the offer to sing at Sanremo, but it will happen the same day of your la prima in Vienna Manon Lescaut [sic: here the Il Giorno journalist makes a mistake: she writes Manon Lescaut, but it’s really Massenet's Manon], and how will you manage to do that?’”

Alagna: “’We shall see: Everything is possible, if one wants…or I can go to Sanremo as a special guest.’”

Make sure to visit Opera Chic tomorrow for the answer to these pressing (well, all is relative) questions.

Alagna Video: EEEEE-HAW!

Well, I recorded the Alagna video clips from the television with a Leica C-LUX, and they are like 600+ MB, so what you see currently on YouTube is a capture of that Leica video, captured playing on an imac with a Sony cameraphone. It's pretty weak...

...but that's about all that the technical department of Opera Chic can manage right now.

I'll update as necesary, but see that some of you have managed to seed the entire interview via hosting services. Sooooo, go for it! brb tia.

VVVVV UPDATE VVVVV

The wonderful La Cieca directed me to this much better version on YouTube. Yay La Cieca saves the day!:

vvv UPDATE vvv

One of our commentators has taken a stab at a partial Sicilian translation of the Donkey Song. A smattering of the lyrics are here as:

My poor donkey
What a beautiful voice you had
Like a great tenor
My beloved donkey
How could I ever forget you?

You brayed
Heee Haw Heee Haw
O donkey, dear to my heart
How could I ever forget you?

ALAGNA "DOMENICA IN" SCREENSHOTS

Update: a new Opera Chic flickr set of fifteen additional screen-shots have been added, including three-year-old Alanga holding a guitar.)

MY MOST FAVORITE TWO IMAGES VVVVVVV

Alagna Recap

Okay, here is the recap:

First Alagna talked about his family, about his life growing-up in a musical environment. He spoke how he first held a guitar at age three. He spoke about his Sicilian side of the family, and was like, “I’m one of you”.

He said, “Being a singer is the most beautiful profession in the world. Fate made me become a singer.”

Then he said, “My debut took place in a pizzeria. I sang cabaret for eight years. And I have been singing opera for twenty.”

Then he spoke about La Scala, the booing, and his premonitions for a bad night:

“As soon as the curtain went up, the booing started. And this is very poor conduct for an audience. My problem is that I suffer from hypoglycemia, and in those moments that I am affected, I lose all my strength. I felt like earth had opened beneath me. The theater should stop the opera at least for five minutes to let me recover. Sometimes audiences can wait as long as one hour and a half for an ailing singer. At La Scala, instead, they bragged that they didn’t even lose one beat!

[…] “I arrived at the theater, two hours before the show was scheduled to begin, and I found one tenor warming-up his voice. And he told me, “They said you would not come tonight, Roberto!” He also told me that a third tenor was arriving at the theater in a cab.”

He then repeated the allegation that he saw people backstage doing the ‘karate-chop’ motions towards him, but this we’ve heard before.

Then they showed a black-white film of Maria Callas leaving the Rome Opera after her famous Norma. That will also be later uploaded.

Then he spoke about Angela and his marriage. They showed a clip of one of his old La Boheme with himself and Angela, and they were eating an ice cream cone together. [Edit: The eating ice-cream scene was actually from Elisir d'amore, but the scene was spliced into the montage directly after a scene from La Boheme, so I missed the transition while balancing screen-shots, filming, and taking notes.] He said how gorgeous she is, as did Pippo. And he said, “Between Angela and I, there is always been electricity. Now we keep on paying the electric bill.” (Bad joke that I don’t really “get”).

Then he went to a grand piano that had been wheeled-in, and started saying that he hasn’t been singing because his heart was broken, and it was the first time something so bad happened to him to make him stop singing.

He started singing then the very ending of aria “Celeste Aida” in a very thin, weak voice.

…and then he sang “The Dead Donkey Song”.  Here is the link to the lyrics for his sing, "U sciccareddu" for which, he got a standing ovation from the audience.

He was wearing this horrible black suit with some sort of black, raised pattern swirling all over it. A white dress-shirt, a black faux-crocodile-skin black tie, and an orange scarf. He looked nervous, like he always does; but he was at least wearing some sort of sweat-blotting powder.

Gah. It's over. I am currently processing/downloading the film, and I will start right now on uploading screen-shots.

Alagna Circus has Started!

I AM WATCHING! ALAGNA IS TALKING AND LOOKS FAIRLY NERVOUS! He's talking about La Scala right now. I must watch!

He is wearing a fake, leather/crocodile skin, black tie. And a orange cashmere scarf over his black, patterned suit. Ewwww!

There is a huge picture behind him and Pippo on a plasma, that displays Alagna dressed in Zeffirelli's golden Radames costume from the La Scala Aida, and it is autographed by Alagna.

He spoke already about his family, and now he's talking about what happened at La Scala!

F5 F5 F5 F5 F5!!!

They showed a picture of Alagna at three-years-old holding a guitar.

He is not sweaty! He is wearing lots of powder. But he is so nervous!

He is talking about Angela, who Baudo called "the most beautiful lady". Alagna is talking about ANGELA!

They are showing a clip from the La Boheme where they sang together, and Alagna looks like at least 15 years younger.

OMG HERE COMES THE PIANO! Alagna is about to sing!

He's talking about Celeste Aida! He's going to sing any second!

OMG HE SANG! HE SANG! SO BAD!

He's talking again about how he couldn't sing for a few days because his heart ached.

HE IS SINGING AGAIN! A SONG ABOUT A DONKEY!

HE IS MAKING DONKEY NOISES! I AM NOT KIDDING!!

EEEEEEE-HA EEEEEEEE-HA!

IT IS A SONG SICILIANA! HE SANG IN SICILIAN DIALECT!

THE SONG IS ABOUT A DEAD DONKEY!

VIVO ROBERTO ALAGNA! (as said by Pippo at the end of the interview)

vvvvvvUPDATEvvvvvvvv

Okay, the Alagnafest is over. He really did sing a song about a dead donkey. I am not joking. AND HE DID BRAY!

I have tons of screenshots, and I filmed his entire singing "episode". I opened a YouTube (OperaChicBlog), and will host the clips there. I am currently uploading screenshots...

Opera Chic: Gloating, and Live Blogging the Live Feed of Alagna’s Sunday TV Marathon

Dear Lovely Readers,

Please allow Opera Chic a well-deserved intervallo of gloating for announcing her world-exclusive tip almost two days ago, that allowed me to scoop actual, real-live, breathing journalistic institutions.

As I announced on Friday night during my exclusive interview with Alagna’s lead Counsel Marco Rocchini, Maestro Roberto Alagna will indeed appear tomorrow late afternoon in the Italian Television talk show Domenica In, which is broadcast on RAI Uno. The tenor will be interviewed, and will also sing selected arias.

Here is a link Italian wire agency ADN KRONOS via Yahoo!

For your non-stop Alagna satisfaction, Opera Chic will be LIVE BLOGGING tomorrow, recording clips, translating the Italian language interviews, and providing screenshots straight from 42-inch plasma.

Alagna is scheduled to appear around 6:00 pm Italian time (GMT +1), so it will be 12:00 pm noon in New York City.

According to the schedule of Domenica In, Alagna will be interviewed. He will be asked to explain the events of the Aida La Prima at Teatro alla Scala, to retell his life as a great international artist, and then he will sing a few arias and famous songs.

Alagna will be interviewed by Pippo Baudo, who is the ex-husband of Katia Ricciarelli. He is also the man who, in 1987, beat-up a loggionista outside of Teatro alla Scala in a fist-fight, after his wife Ricciarelli’s Luisa Miller was relentlessly booed by the loggionisti while screamed to the audience, “May God’s curse strike you all!”

Best from Milan,
Opera Chic

p.s. At this point I’m pretty sure I’m the kewlest lady in the entire blogsphere, to be perfectly honest. My scooping prowess, much like my power level, is off the charts! ;p

What if they boo him in Sanremo, too?

Now that the fiasco at La Scala has left us in the chaotic aftermath of Alagna's hasty decisions, what remains is the mess of scheduling that he will undoubtedly have to cleanse. One of the many diplomatic mistakes that Alagna committed, even before shunning his crew and colleagues at the traditional aperitivo with the media the Saturday afternoon before La Prima (as Opera Chic had previously reported here), is his frankly baffling decision to go to the horribly low-brow pop music festival Sanremo (as Opera Chic previously reported here).

What's even more baffling is that even though Pippo Baudo (the super-lame Director/MC of the festival and the ex-husband of Katia Ricciarelli) wanted Alagna to perform in the hottest slot of the festival (which falls on Saturday, March 3, 2007), Alagna's schedule betrays him, and states that he is disposed. Disappointing for the Sanremo staff, seeing that for the occasion of Alagna agreeing to sing at the festival, two lamer songwriters Guido Morra and Maurizio Fabrizio had agreed to write him an original song, which Alagna promises to sing on the show: "Schiavo d'Amore", (Slave to Love). ewww, lame.

Well, that special slot that Alagna has overbooked, happens to be the *same* night that he has committed himself to a slightly more important appointment: Interpreting Chevalier Des Grieux for opening night of at Massenet’s Manon (with Anna Netrebko) at the Wiener Staatsoper.

No doubt, Alagna will have to appease both his ego and the Sanremo staff, and graciously decline the huge bonus super-star spotlight on Saturday, March 3, 2007, and instead, defer to an earlier, less-glamorous appearance Thursday or Friday.

Regardless, I can’t imagine that the Vienna State Opera management will be pleased with the tenor’s decision to be in transit the night before he is to be singing at opening night: flying back and forth from Vienna to Italy and then having to be driven to the small, airport-lacking Italian-town close to the French border? To you, Opera Chic readers, the answer.

And now please allow Opera Chic to get a few precious hours of sleep before waking-up tomorrow morning; she needs to be awake early to confirm a wild rumor she has received by SMS message around midnight...see you laters, Alagna-haters! v(º_o)v