The great opera star Placido Flamingo!

After finding that clip of Robin Schlotz on YouTube, to which I was directed to by numerous Opera-L postings as well as by the amazed members of the Yahoo! Gheorghiu and Alagna club, I decided to see what other operatic offerings were available. I regret to say about 90% of what I found when I put "opera" in the site's search function was rank (really rank) amateurs attempting selections from Phantom of the Opera, and a lot of the rest is soap opera stuff! OK, there was Emmy Rossum's screen test for the Phantom film (which I haven't seen yet), and she's not half bad - she interpolated some interesting coloratura into "Think of Me", but it's mostly dire.

But quite to my delight I did find, after about 10 pages of mediocrity, I found two clips with an opera star every child, certainly, should know about: the greatest (and most dangerous), flamingo opera star, Placido Flamingo, a marvelous Muppet introduced on Sesame Street(1) I would guess about 10 years ago. Perhaps more - Richard Hunt, who provided Maestro Flamingo's marvelous tenor voice, has since passed away. Unfortunately, the only pictures I could find of Maestro Flamingo are way too small to be clearly seen here. And I can't find a picture of him with his namesake, although I clearly remember seeing one!

This clip shows a performance of the opera Peligro ("danger" in Spanish) live from the Nestropolitan Opera House ("Live from The Nest", ha ha ha), introduced by a Muppet named Phil Harmonic. The opera itself sounds a little like "That's Amore". Unfortunately, we only get to hear the first act of this masterpiece, for reasons that I will let Mr. Harmonic inform you of.




And this one is a performance (from Pretty Great Performances, live from Barnegie Hall) of the Italian Street Song from Naughty Marietta, where Maestro Flamingo is joined by the Sesame Street All-Animal Orchestra conducted by "world-renowned very good sport" Seiji Ozawa. Yes, that is Maestro Ozawa, not a Muppet version! (2)



(Note: While this may the fault of the computer I've been using, I've found that it takes an awfully long time to download these videos, and they're often interrupted. Once downloaded, however, you should have no trouble replaying them.

Unfortunately, this was all I could find of these delightful "operas" - no La Grouchiata with Wilhelmina Fernandez (and Oscar the Grouch), for example. I am also certain that there must have been a sketch with Maestro Flamingo and his namesake singing together. Not to mention I also would love to be able to find a clip of Meryl Streep taking acting lessons from Meryl Sheep!

I also wish find some of the operas that played on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, created by and starring the wonderful baritone John Reardon. When I was five or six years old I would regularly run home and say "Mama, Mama, there's going to be an opera on Mister Rogers!". Much later, when I was about ten or so, I remember a particular opera about a kitty that wanted to be a star (that is, in the sky), and Reardon was her father. I was absolutely shocked when, after growing up, I bought the incredible La Boheme recording with Jussi Björling, Victoria De Los Angeles, and Robert Merrill, and Reardon was Schaunard! I had no idea he was a "real" opera singer!

(I actually cried when he died, as I did with Fred Rogers)

By the way, speaking of Maestro Flamingo's namesake, I was watching a rerun of The Cosby Show from about 20 years ago where he guest starred. Cliff Huxtable, Bill Cosby's character, is a obstetrician, and Domingo played Alberto, a Spanish colleague who comes to his house for a visit. Domingo, who looks shockingly young (it's been a while since he's had black hair) sings "Besame Mucho", and Cosby's efforts to imitate him are hilarious. After Alberto leaves, Cliff's wife Clair (Phylicia Rahsad) comments on his "rich, strong voice", leading to another round of imitations from hubby!

Domingo (as well as Beverly Sills) also had several quite memorable visits to the Carol Burnett Show, but that's for another time.

(1)For non-American readers of this blog - Sesame Street is one of our oldest and most prestigious children's shows, having been around since I was a baby, maybe before. I'm pretty sure it helped me learn to read - at the age of 2. It is so famous that a great many famous people - actors, singers, musicians, writers, etc. have appeared on it, probably to impress their kids!There are also many different versions of the show in different countries, such as Rechov Sumsum in Israel and Yiftah-ha-Simsim in Arabic-speaking countries. I think the British equivalent (not a clone of the American show like the ones I just mentioned) is TISWAS.

(2) I really hope that a DVD version is released of a marvelous video from Deutsche Grammophon called A Prokofiev Fantasy with Peter and the Wolf. Basically, this is a dramatization, narrated by Sting, with the Spitting Image puppets (probably best known in the US for their contribution to Genesis' "Land of Confusion" video) conducted by Claudio Abbado. It shows what a sense of humor Maestro Abbado has, although that should be evident from his handling of Rossini. Before Peter and the Wolf, the orchestra plays the March in D, during which we see several Spitting Image puppets of conductors - I think Ozawa, von Karajan and Mehta- fighting in the pit until Abbado sweeps in and starts conducting, and then with a morph shot, he turns into a Spitting Image puppet! And this is only the beginning of the fun! The musical program also includes the Classical Symphony and Overture on Hebrew Themes.