Renee Fleming to star in Living on Love at the Longacre Theatre — Page 2

Fantod,

You have ears, but you are still wet behind them. Here's a quote from someone who really can tell the difference between a great singer and a mediocre one.

Conductor Sir Georg Solti said of Fleming, "In my long life, I have met maybe two sopranos with this quality of singing; the other was Renata Tebaldi."

She's a mediocre opera singer at best, much like Callas, but I don't know her acting chops, so I might be interested in seeing it.

Fantod, you have got to be fvcking kidding me!!!

And if any of you believe Fantod is a teenager then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would love to sell you.

Updated On: 12/23/14 at 02:46 PM

Fine. Forget I said anything. Every time I bring this up with anybody I get mocked and ridiculed, so just let me listen to my own recordings and you listen to yours.

And CarlosAlberto, ........really?

Every time I bring this up with anybody I get mocked and ridiculed, so just let me listen to my own recordings and you listen to yours.


If every time you bring this up you get "mocked and ridiculed", perhaps you should take that as a sign that people recognize you don't know what you're talking about. To say that Renee Fleming--or Callas--is not your favorite singer is one thing. To say that either is mediocre at best is another thing all together. But contrarianism is a phase most of us pass through, especially in youth, and hopefully you'll outgrow it.

It's intriguing, though, that Caballe is your standard of singing, while you call out Callas for her "pitch issues" (a nonsense term) and singing in an "ungainly manner" (whatever that means), considering that Caballe, like Callas, experienced a premature vocal decline and ended her operatic career giving performances of wild inconsistency. Fleming, on the other hand, is still singing with great style and musicianship well into her fifties, as her recent Met performances have shown.

LarryD2, you're right, my language was too strong for Callas. She is quite talented. I still have my opinion about Renee Fleming, but I don't think I'm alone in that opinion.

Fantod, it's not that we mind what you said, it's the way you said it. If you don't like a particular singer, fine. That's expected around here (personally, you lost me when you said Callas was mediocre, but that's me). But c'mon. You know this board. You gotta be able to back up your opinion, not just pop off a few adjectives. If you tried that bare minimum stuff on the Met's message board, the posters there would eat you alive (happened to me when I was 17).

(btw, La Divina has been dead since the 70s, so referring to her in the present tense is a bit weird)

Ahhhhhhh! My girl's coming to Broadway!

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