You don't have to be an opera-lover to love Julia Migenes' affectionate send-up of the world of opera. It's a world she knows well, having trained as a soprano and sung at such major venues as the Metropolitan, Covent Garden and Vienna Volksoper, where she specialized in the music of Donizetti, Berg, Strauss and Puccini. Migenes (who is married to the film director Peter Medak) would be enjoying an even more successful operatic career if not for her irreverence and rebelliousness.
In Vienna, for example, she was canned by the Volksoper for breaking her exclusive contract and singing Carmen in Germany. And, as she reveals during the course of her mostly comic but occasionally poignant one woman show, she has made enemies of powerful directors by laughing at their sometimes bizarre and ridiculous creative demands (such as making her crawl across the stage on her belly while singing a difficult aria). In her eyes most operas are goofy enough by themselves, with their twisted plots and fat middle-aged singers trying to pass themselves off as teenagers (Romeo & Juliet being a case in point). At the same time, she knows the power and greatness of opera and pays it tribute during the course of her show, which she devised herself several years ago and has been touring in ever since, both here and in Europe.
Mostly, though, she sticks to humor, especially when she launches into such famous arias as the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor and Isolde's Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. She's at her funniest, though, when she essays the dying scene from La Traviata and combines bravura singing with biting asides and inspired slapstick. Migenes is to opera what Victor Borge is to classical music.
