Millo Cancels; Pussycat Dolls to Sub

Of course ...

Breaking News [parterre]
Refunds available at point of purchase [rondelsener]
Monster Rita approaches land [NYT]
NYCOperaFanatic the cause of all catastrophe [her words]

(This post is updated frequently.)

UPDATE 1: Someone else cancelled her rock concert. It wasn't Millo. In fact, she had two gowns prepared.

Not Millo's fault [Ed, via opera-l]

UPDATE 2: Rumors agree that it may be a clash of repertoire. According to one, Delsener wants "high, higher, highest," referring to high notes (of what other use is a soprano, basically), while La Millo shall only be guided by "kunst, kunst, kunst." I suspect it's something more fundamental. For his "rock" concert, Delsener may have insisted on Missy Elliot covers, while Millo held she can only go as far as Alanis Morissette.

UPDATE 3. Ron Delsener is a businessman, first and foremost. Anyone who puts together a concert with Daryl Hall & John Oates has no business dictating repertory. What does he know about anything if he calls Millo "the greatest living soprano in the world right now." Anyway, no one cancels a sold-out event, unless you're Montserrat Caballé. And you and I know Millo ain't Montsy. So, OK, those are the facts.

UPDATE 4. You know how the Arts & Leisure section of the Sunday New York Times has separate ad sections for Broadway, Jazz, and such, and for classical performances (Met, City Opera, NY Philharmonic, etc..). Well, Sieglinde was alerted by a close friend that this past Sunday's paper featured an ad for Millo amidst notices for B.B. King, The Color Purple, Blue Man Group, Kitty Carlisle Hart, and some crafts festival. (Meanwhile, the ad features a quote from the presenter Delsener himself: "The Greatest Living Soprano.") Why they couldn't figure out to place it among its own kind is probably why the show got cancelled. Not to mention that up to its very end, there remained no official word of what the musical program would have looked like. Basically, the ad-strategy was: "Aprile Millo: greatest soprano; now you'd be a fool not to buy a ticket."

UPDATE 5. Here's the ad.



UPDATE 6: Official reason is the age-old contemporary crossover vs. classical repertory. Here's what's wrong with it: (a) Delsener will promote Joy Behar singing countertenor arias if it put butts on seats, (b) what was Millo thinking to associate with rock promoters, (c) could Delsener be thinking of Renée Fleming when he uttered "greatest living soprano"? 'Coz that other girl needs no persuading to "cross over."

Aprile Millo Recital Canceled Over Differences with Producer [PlaybillArts]

UPDATE 7. Little detective work can yield colossal clues. Sieglinde was flat wrong to have accused both parties of no development in musical program. Between the publications of these two PlaybillArts reports (here and here), there was, indeed, a momentous change in musical program. Specifically, an earlier mention of Handel now morphed into "a rare aria by Handel." Aha! Sieglinde thinks Delsener wasn't about to go beyond "Ombra Mai Fu" or "Endless Pleasure" in Handel, but our girl Millo ain't giving up on a bravura aria from Athalia that was reported to have just resurfaced in someone's New Jersey basement. This story gets more and more tragic by the minute. Stay tuned.