FILM HITS THE RIGHT NOTES
The story of a very bad opera singer
Much like a car accident that people can’t look away from, there’s something fascinating about the human failing of self-delusion.
Miguel de Cervantes knew he was on to something back in 1605, when he invented Don Quixote, the self-styled knight whose vivid imagination usurped reality.
More recently, the 1994 biopic Ed Wood focused on the famously inept filmmaker.
And now the baton of incompetence has been passed to Florence Foster Jenkins, a profoundly untalented singer who is probably the worst operatic soprano in recorded history. The high-society lady dumbfounded, horrified and delighted New York music-lovers in the 1940s.
There was a time when she was a kind of a private “in-joke” in the classical music world. But now her posthumous reputation is expanding in all directions.
In Stephen Frears’ film, Foster Jenkins is played by Meryl Streep — and much to her credit, Streep fleshes out the role, emphasizing her character’s frailty and courage, as well as her supreme obliviousness.
Also, Streep sings very badly very well.
Listening to the real Foster Jenkins quickly reveals, she was every bit as dreadful as Streep makes her out to be. Through her recordings she has lived on to astound successive generations of singers and listeners.
“The first time I heard her, I was in university,” recalls Canadian opera star Ben Heppner. “I can remember the joy of listening to her recordings. They were so bad they were good.”
Like anyone who sets themselves up (consciously or subconsciously) as a Naked Emperor, Foster Jenkins couldn’t have done it without the support of others.
Fortunately for her, she had a canny ability to surround herself with the right people. As a wealthy heiress and a prominent socialite she was politely indulged (and also feared) within her circle of friends. And her well-paid coaches and accompanists knew what to say, and what not to say, to keep their paycheques coming.
But Foster Jenkins’ biggest supporter was her second husband, a none-too-successful English actor named St. Clair Bayfield.
He’s portrayed by Hugh Grant, with a touch so light that his character threatens to float away. The only thing that seems to anchor Grant’s Bayfield is his firm belief that he’s doing the right thing.
“Without loyalty there’s nothing,” he solemnly declares to pianist Cosme McMoon (played by Simon Helberg, best known as Howard Wolowitz on The Big Bang Theory).
The ultimate fulfilment of Foster Jenkins’ musical aspirations — and also the culmination of the movie — was her 1944 public recital at Carnegie Hall. By this point, she had become well known through her recordings and radio broadcasts, the event sold out.
Soon, bursts of convulsive laughter broke out in the audience — yet according to eyewitness accounts, Foster Jenkins wasn’t fazed by this reaction. Afterwards, Bayfield wrote in her diary that the recital went very well.
Were people laughing with her, or at her?
In Florence Foster Jenkins, Frears has the audience do both things at once, suggesting that she was admired for her indomitable spirit and appreciated as the source of so much hilarity — whether it was intended or not.