Klarinet Archive - Posting 000584.txt from 2002/05

From: George Kidder <gkidder@-----.org>
Subj: [kl] Imperfect Pitch
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 23:47:48 -0400

If I remember rightly, there was also a 33 RPM LP entitled "Florence!
Foster!! Jenkins!!! Sings!!!!" which gave some additional background. I
may still have it, but not handy. One note I do remember was that after
she was injured in a taxi accident, she refused to sue the cab driver, on
the grounds that after the accident she "could sing a higher E than ever."

At 16:12 5/21/02 -0400, you wrote:
>Florence Foster Jenkins. Oh God. RCA Victor years back issued a recording
>called "The Glory(?) of the Human Voice." Yes, the question mark was part
>of it. I gather (I don't know this for sure) she was a very rich lady with
>a passion for singing but without talent. She bought herself recital space,
>and bought herself recording time. People came to the recitals as years
>later they attended recitals by Stefan Zucker and his mother, the late
>Rosina Wolf, only Zucker was and remains a nasty SOB. It was lots more fun
>to laugh at Zucker because he gave himself colossal airs that almost
>demanded deflation. Jenkins? Who knows what on earth she was thinking.
>It's hard for me to laugh at this--I feel rather like I'm laughing at
>someone you'd see in the subway playing for coin.
>
>Ken
>-----------
>Kenneth Wolman
>http://www.kenwolman.com
>"...perhaps forgiveness is a process more than an emotion, perhaps it's
>meant to make us discover those other conditions within ourselves, love,
>belief in love, to which forgiveness itself is incidental..."--C. K.
>Williams, "Misgivings"
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------

George Kidder
Bar Harbor, ME

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