Post by davidhr on Jun 28, 2011 10:24:56 GMT -5
Presumably Lara was in Paris this past week, rehearsing with members of AICOM for the performance of the show ‘1939’ on Wednesday and Thursday. It received some publicity on ‘The Journal of Jacky', a popular TV show, where two cast members appeared (available on youtube). Lara will apparently open the production and sing about four songs, playing the part of Gisele – whether she will do much real acting is unclear. By this time next week, we will of course know what happened, and hopefully someone will have been able to record Lara’s performance (though it might be difficult to do that in a theatre setting).
After that, she returns to ‘the countries to the east’, this time for a performance of her “Mlle. Zhivago” concert in Astana, Khazhakstan on July 5th. She has said it will be like her concerts in Moscow, and if that is really so, it might feature a large orchestra (and probably at least some lip-synching). The Mlle. Zhivago album jumped back up to #10 in Russia, and is now officially classified as ‘gold’ (25,000 sales). While that sounds like a small number after 33 weeks on the chart, almost all in the top 15, remember that only a fraction of all album sales in Russia are officially recorded.
Michael Bolton’s album ‘Gems’, including his duet with Lara on ‘The Prayer’ has gotten very good customer reviews from the few who have so far offered an opinion. Lara has gotten an occasional (positive) mention. It is now 93rd in sales on Amazon.com. In the live performance, Lara’s voice came across a little more prominently than she does on this CD version (recorded, as noted by David Forster, over the Internet), but both are very worthy additions to her catalog.
Nothing more of a current nature has appeared (yet) on Lara’s official Facebook site. The ‘info’ section now includes a biography that was probably written during the spring of 2010. It therefore contains little about “Mlle. Zhivago”, either the movie or the CD. One wonders how much more effort would have been required to add a few paragraphs to make it current. We’ll see if this venue proves any more informative or interactive than the official site; one drawback is that new topics in Facebook can only be entered by Lara’s people, whereas we know that most new information on the official site is provided by the fans.
The ‘Pure-Lara’ Facebook site has added some downloadable videos from 1996; they are available at:
www.pure-lara.fr/index.php/medias/184-emissions-tv-1996
And larafabiannews.com has reconstituted their media section (with some audios and videos). Click on the ‘media’ section in the menu on the left for downloadable files.
Now for the next installment from the ‘Biography of Lara’, covering pp. 150-155. This cuts across two topics – the end of the chapter on Lara’s friends, and the beginning of Chapter 14, "The New Lara Fabian”, concerned with the album ‘Neuf’.
**In addition to Maurane, the ‘friends’ chapter discusses Nathalie, Justin Henin, Mathalie Seigner and Virginie Hocq.
**With respect to Nathalie, we are familiar with most of the remarks about Lara’s longest-term friend (since they were 14), including that the album TLFM came about because of a conversation the two of them had about women singers who were most influential in their lives. And that Lara wrote the lyrics for ‘La Difference’ while thinking of her. It notes that this is the ‘Nathalie’ who manages the official forum. If that is really true, then she’s not doing Lara any favors…
**Concerning Justin Henin, they met at a hotel and had an instant rapport with one another. She says that the aspect she finds most appealing about Lara is her sense of humor.
**Mathile Seigner had criticized Lara in the beginning, but came to her defense when she felt the media attacks had gone too far. They had lunch together, and, according to Lara, recognized that each of them ”had a fragility underneath their warrior aspects, an innocence like that of a small child”.
**Virginie Hocq got to know Lara when she opened for her during the first part of the ‘Un regard Neuf’ tour. They are drawn together by their love of food and humor; she is not hesitant to poke fun at Lara and her ‘cleanliness foibles’, as we saw in “Panique dans l’oreilette’.
**With the next chapter, the biographer has a problem (unacknowledged by him). Many of Lara’s quotes that he uses from that time revolve around her feeling that she has taken a new direction, ‘returning to herself', with her voice being just ‘one of the instruments’, that it doesn’t have to carry the whole load anymore, that she can just ‘sing in the zone’. She concludes that the approach is more healthy, allowing her to vocalize the way she used to, before she was reaching for success. She in effect acknowledges that she should listen to her critics so as to improve herself.
**The problem with that is now, some years later, Lara has basically refuted all of that. Her current interpretation was that this was all a mistake, that she was cowered by her critics and should never have abandoned who she really was. In that regard, she no longer sings any songs from that album on tour. The book, at least to this point, ignores this revisionist history.
**As for the album ‘Neuf’ itself, Lara thinks of it as less egocentric, more outward looking. She says this is due primarily to the influence of Jean-Felix Lalanne, who she says is ‘without ego’, simply a man concerned with music, not power games. As her boyfriend for these years, he had an enormous influence, whether for better or worse depends on your point of view (and in Lara’s case, varies with time).
We know that there is a real dichotomy among Lara’s fans concerning whether she should be pursuing the more nuanced singing, as in ‘Neuf’, or the more powerful singing of 'Pure' (or ‘Mlle. Zhivago’). This was brought to the fore with TLFM. When we heard the six songs from what became known as TLFM1, the ‘power singing fans’ complained vociferously that Lara was barely audible, and that she was now no different from any other singer. However, when TLFM1 was cancelled, the ‘more nuanced’ crowd kept calling for its release (which doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon, if ever). If Lara does have a new French album next year, it will be interesting to see which tack she ends up taking…
David
After that, she returns to ‘the countries to the east’, this time for a performance of her “Mlle. Zhivago” concert in Astana, Khazhakstan on July 5th. She has said it will be like her concerts in Moscow, and if that is really so, it might feature a large orchestra (and probably at least some lip-synching). The Mlle. Zhivago album jumped back up to #10 in Russia, and is now officially classified as ‘gold’ (25,000 sales). While that sounds like a small number after 33 weeks on the chart, almost all in the top 15, remember that only a fraction of all album sales in Russia are officially recorded.
Michael Bolton’s album ‘Gems’, including his duet with Lara on ‘The Prayer’ has gotten very good customer reviews from the few who have so far offered an opinion. Lara has gotten an occasional (positive) mention. It is now 93rd in sales on Amazon.com. In the live performance, Lara’s voice came across a little more prominently than she does on this CD version (recorded, as noted by David Forster, over the Internet), but both are very worthy additions to her catalog.
Nothing more of a current nature has appeared (yet) on Lara’s official Facebook site. The ‘info’ section now includes a biography that was probably written during the spring of 2010. It therefore contains little about “Mlle. Zhivago”, either the movie or the CD. One wonders how much more effort would have been required to add a few paragraphs to make it current. We’ll see if this venue proves any more informative or interactive than the official site; one drawback is that new topics in Facebook can only be entered by Lara’s people, whereas we know that most new information on the official site is provided by the fans.
The ‘Pure-Lara’ Facebook site has added some downloadable videos from 1996; they are available at:
www.pure-lara.fr/index.php/medias/184-emissions-tv-1996
And larafabiannews.com has reconstituted their media section (with some audios and videos). Click on the ‘media’ section in the menu on the left for downloadable files.
Now for the next installment from the ‘Biography of Lara’, covering pp. 150-155. This cuts across two topics – the end of the chapter on Lara’s friends, and the beginning of Chapter 14, "The New Lara Fabian”, concerned with the album ‘Neuf’.
**In addition to Maurane, the ‘friends’ chapter discusses Nathalie, Justin Henin, Mathalie Seigner and Virginie Hocq.
**With respect to Nathalie, we are familiar with most of the remarks about Lara’s longest-term friend (since they were 14), including that the album TLFM came about because of a conversation the two of them had about women singers who were most influential in their lives. And that Lara wrote the lyrics for ‘La Difference’ while thinking of her. It notes that this is the ‘Nathalie’ who manages the official forum. If that is really true, then she’s not doing Lara any favors…
**Concerning Justin Henin, they met at a hotel and had an instant rapport with one another. She says that the aspect she finds most appealing about Lara is her sense of humor.
**Mathile Seigner had criticized Lara in the beginning, but came to her defense when she felt the media attacks had gone too far. They had lunch together, and, according to Lara, recognized that each of them ”had a fragility underneath their warrior aspects, an innocence like that of a small child”.
**Virginie Hocq got to know Lara when she opened for her during the first part of the ‘Un regard Neuf’ tour. They are drawn together by their love of food and humor; she is not hesitant to poke fun at Lara and her ‘cleanliness foibles’, as we saw in “Panique dans l’oreilette’.
**With the next chapter, the biographer has a problem (unacknowledged by him). Many of Lara’s quotes that he uses from that time revolve around her feeling that she has taken a new direction, ‘returning to herself', with her voice being just ‘one of the instruments’, that it doesn’t have to carry the whole load anymore, that she can just ‘sing in the zone’. She concludes that the approach is more healthy, allowing her to vocalize the way she used to, before she was reaching for success. She in effect acknowledges that she should listen to her critics so as to improve herself.
**The problem with that is now, some years later, Lara has basically refuted all of that. Her current interpretation was that this was all a mistake, that she was cowered by her critics and should never have abandoned who she really was. In that regard, she no longer sings any songs from that album on tour. The book, at least to this point, ignores this revisionist history.
**As for the album ‘Neuf’ itself, Lara thinks of it as less egocentric, more outward looking. She says this is due primarily to the influence of Jean-Felix Lalanne, who she says is ‘without ego’, simply a man concerned with music, not power games. As her boyfriend for these years, he had an enormous influence, whether for better or worse depends on your point of view (and in Lara’s case, varies with time).
We know that there is a real dichotomy among Lara’s fans concerning whether she should be pursuing the more nuanced singing, as in ‘Neuf’, or the more powerful singing of 'Pure' (or ‘Mlle. Zhivago’). This was brought to the fore with TLFM. When we heard the six songs from what became known as TLFM1, the ‘power singing fans’ complained vociferously that Lara was barely audible, and that she was now no different from any other singer. However, when TLFM1 was cancelled, the ‘more nuanced’ crowd kept calling for its release (which doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon, if ever). If Lara does have a new French album next year, it will be interesting to see which tack she ends up taking…
David