The soprano

Ever have one of those dreams where you wake up at work and you forgot to get dressed?

27-year-old opera prodigy Danielle de Niese, a Dutch-Sri Lankan Los Angeleno via Melbourne, just released her first album, Handel: Arias (thanks, Rohin). She’s an up-and-coming star who got her big break as a soprano understudy:

In the summer of 2005, the soprano scheduled to sing the role of Cleopatra in a new production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare (Julius CÃƒÂ¦sar)… fell sick. Desperate, the management turned to a nobody: a 26-year-old of Dutch and Sri Lankan extraction, extracted from Australia at the age of 10, and raised in California. The youngest singer ever accepted into the Metropolitan Opera’s training program… On opening night, she ceased to be a nobody. Audiences roared themselves hoarse. Critics could barely keep their flies buttoned…

It didn’t take long for the Princess Jasmine references and crude sexual exoticism to fly:

De Niese has the larger-than-life features of a Disney princess. Figuratively (by which I mean literally, with regard to her figure), she is a flesh-and-blood ‘Toon, a regular Jessica Rabbit… At a distance of 14 inches… her eyes are so large as to be dizzying. Her mouth is constructed on a similarly queenly scale. When she sings or speaks her lips put on a show of their own, a bijoux ballet…

She could be Cleoparachuted into a Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan flick, and no one would bat an eye, at least until she started singing; even then, her dance moves might well distract viewers from the fact that the notes were written almost 300 years ago by a man wearing a wig the size of a collie. [Link]

Lissom Danielle de Niese’s Cleopatra dances several of her arias as well as she sings them. This is Cleopatra as uberminx. Before anyone gets hot and bothered about the queen of the Nile disporting herself in such skimpy wardrobe items as Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s see-through, rhinestone-studded little black cocktail number, bear in mind that, for Caesar, Cleopatra represents sexual exoticism par excellence. [Link]

De Niese’s voice shone; she demonstrated complete assurance as a dancer in the Bollywood-derived routines… Opera’s more precious souls won’t want to hear this, but De Niese had put the sex into Sussex… she was born in Melbourne to mixed-race Sri Lankan parents… [Link]

… a lissom, all-singing, all-dancing superstar sex bomb in the slinky shape of Danielle de Niese… But Handel wrote eight arias for Cleopatra (and another eight for Caesar) that he conceivably intended as more than Bollywood song-and-dance routines for a one-dimensional minx. [Link]

My only experience with opera to date was a heavy German production at the Met during which I feared I might fall asleep on my date. But others write of her singing:

She executes her runs and ornaments with a fluid coloratura technique and flair, although she might at times have supplied more dynamic shading and contrast. [Link]

Her singing is utterly delectable and completely assured. She looks terrific in a range of costumes that includes flapper dress, riding gear, slinky cocktail gown and full 18th-century, wide-skirted outfit. And she matches the bravura and allure of her voice with movement that is at once silly and sexy. [Link]

… she’s the third generation of her family to sing professionally… she hasn’t attended a sporting game in years, nor does she frequent parties or bars, because she can’t strain her vocal cords. [Link]

She’s got the best boyfriend name ever, though I’m not sure it would pass the When Harry Met Sally test (’Oh, Ildebrando. Do me, Ildebrando’):

For the past six years, she’s been paired up with the tall, dark and handsome Italian bass Ildebrando d’Arcangelo… [she] brought the house down as Cleopatra - bumping and waggling her way through Kyliesque disco routines at the same time as singing seven baroque arias… [Link]