Joyce has entitled this picture “Cast-a-diva.”On Saturday at Covent Garden in London, Joyce DiDonato enlivened the first night of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville by breaking her leg onstage — then continuing to sing the rest of the performance before going to the hospital.
When an EMS guy came backstage, he asked for an autograph before he asked how she was feeling. This struck me as a wonderful diva moment.
Of course Joyce is much too nice to take full advantage of her status. Not all singers are so modest, however, and here is what happened, when another diva broke her leg.
The diva has broken her leg! What happened?
At the moment of the accident, she let out a shriek, hitting a B flat. (And in the audience, her voice teacher proudly whispered to the man sitting next to her, “You hear that note? I taught her that!”)
She immediately blamed the conductor’s tempi, then asked whether it wasn’t really more appropriate to break her understudy’s leg instead.
She made the EMS technicians wait for her.
“I refuse to be rushed,” she said as she got into the ambulance.
Upon arriving at the hospital and being told she was now a patient, she repeatedly insisted she did not know what this word means.
She demanded that the waiting room be repainted to match her wardrobe.
She requested that all stethoscopes and scalpels in use be “period” surgical instruments.
She addressed the doctor as “Maestro.”
She asked the administrators to announce over the hospital intercom that she was indisposed and would not be performing.
At one point, she murmured nostalgically, “Fibula in Anesthesia? Ah, yes! One of my greatest roles — seventeen curtain calls in Venice!”
Seeing flowers in other patients’ rooms, she naturally assumed that each and every bouquet was for her.
She signed her own cast.
When an EMS guy came backstage, he asked for an autograph before he asked how she was feeling. This struck me as a wonderful diva moment.
Of course Joyce is much too nice to take full advantage of her status. Not all singers are so modest, however, and here is what happened, when another diva broke her leg.
The diva has broken her leg! What happened?
At the moment of the accident, she let out a shriek, hitting a B flat. (And in the audience, her voice teacher proudly whispered to the man sitting next to her, “You hear that note? I taught her that!”)
She immediately blamed the conductor’s tempi, then asked whether it wasn’t really more appropriate to break her understudy’s leg instead.
She made the EMS technicians wait for her.
“I refuse to be rushed,” she said as she got into the ambulance.
Upon arriving at the hospital and being told she was now a patient, she repeatedly insisted she did not know what this word means.
She demanded that the waiting room be repainted to match her wardrobe.
She requested that all stethoscopes and scalpels in use be “period” surgical instruments.
She addressed the doctor as “Maestro.”
She asked the administrators to announce over the hospital intercom that she was indisposed and would not be performing.
At one point, she murmured nostalgically, “Fibula in Anesthesia? Ah, yes! One of my greatest roles — seventeen curtain calls in Venice!”
Seeing flowers in other patients’ rooms, she naturally assumed that each and every bouquet was for her.
She signed her own cast.
She is amazing!
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