If you haven’t heard already, Joyce DiDonato announced yesterday that she will be making her feature film debut as Florence Foster Jenkins. The documentary, titled The Florence Foster Jenkins Story and directed by Ralf Pleger, will be released in November 2016.
So many questions.
But first, let me make sure you understand the significance of this.
Florence Foster Jenkins, in case you don’t know (and if you do know, feel free to scroll to the next section), was a New York socialite, essentially famous for being a terrible singer. As the story goes, she was quite the heiress, which allowed her to make recordings and host public recitals. She was so passionately awful, she actually did quite well for herself. It almost reminds me of The Elixir of Love or The Producers – it was so spectacularly awful or misguided, it actually worked.
Alright, back to my questions.
The first question that popped into my head was, “What about Meryl Streep?” Well, apparently there’s a completely different film being released about Florence where Meryl Streep will play the role. Strangely enough, that film is also coming out in November 2016. I’m guessing that Streep’s film will be more of a biopic than a documentary. Still, I can’t help but wonder where all of the love for Florence is suddenly coming from, but it’s clearly there.
So my next question then: why Joyce? I mean, she’s kind of the queen bee of the opera world. The woman won a Grammy. Did they choose her for her appeal to operatic audiences? Do they expect her to sound… bad?
Fortunately, the announcement on Ms. DiDonato’s website kind of cleared that up for me through one line:
“The casting of a truly great opera singer as the notoriously woeful Florence Foster Jenkins is a unique aspect of the film that juxtaposes two musical worlds: the reality and the delusion.”
After reading this, along with examining the picture more closely, a vision for the film began to form in my mind. My guess is that Joyce DiDonato will be portraying Florence Foster Jenkins as she envisioned herself rather than as the world saw her. If I am correct (and I do hope I am), I am much more intrigued. After all, I don’t particularly want to see movie where Joyce trying to sound bad while trying to sound good while trying to sound bad. We already enjoy seeing her as a girl being boys being girls.
So, what do you think of Joyce DiDonato as Florence Foster Jenkins? Excited? Concerned? Would you have cast the same way? Who do you think will do it better, Joyce or Meryl? Let’s get things heated in here!
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