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- Apr 30, 2005
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Florence Foster Jenkins was a 'singer'.
She was a rich high-ranking socialite in NYC.
Her concerts sold out, but not for the reasons she presumed.
Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard, but she didn't know it.
IIRC, she even booked and sold out Carnegie Hall.
Here is one of her, uhm, best recordings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE
Now Meryl Streep will star in a film about her.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160504-why-florence-foster-jenkins-was-the-worlds-worst-singer
From Wiki:
From her recordings it is apparent that Jenkins had little sense of pitch or rhythm, and was barely capable of sustaining a note. Her accompanist, Cosmé McMoon, can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes.[10] Unfortunately, there was nothing McMoon could do to help conceal the glaring inaccuracy of Jenkins' intonation: the notes she sang were consistently flat and their pitch deviated from the sheet music by as much as a semitone. Her dubious diction, especially in foreign languages, is also noteworthy. To make matters worse, the technically-challenging songs she performed (requiring levels of musical skill far beyond her ability and vocal range) served only to emphasise these deficiencies.
In retrospect, Jenkins's difficulties have at least partially been attributed to her suffering from syphilis, which caused progressive deterioration of her central nervous system. The ravages of her disease were compounded by side effects from poisonous mercury and arsenic treatments—the only therapy available for syphilis at the time. No effective treatment existed until the discovery of penicillin; by the time it became generally available, Jenkins' disease had progressed to the tertiary stage, which is unresponsive even to antibiotics.[2]
She was a rich high-ranking socialite in NYC.
Her concerts sold out, but not for the reasons she presumed.
Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard, but she didn't know it.
IIRC, she even booked and sold out Carnegie Hall.
Here is one of her, uhm, best recordings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE
Now Meryl Streep will star in a film about her.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160504-why-florence-foster-jenkins-was-the-worlds-worst-singer
From Wiki:
From her recordings it is apparent that Jenkins had little sense of pitch or rhythm, and was barely capable of sustaining a note. Her accompanist, Cosmé McMoon, can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes.[10] Unfortunately, there was nothing McMoon could do to help conceal the glaring inaccuracy of Jenkins' intonation: the notes she sang were consistently flat and their pitch deviated from the sheet music by as much as a semitone. Her dubious diction, especially in foreign languages, is also noteworthy. To make matters worse, the technically-challenging songs she performed (requiring levels of musical skill far beyond her ability and vocal range) served only to emphasise these deficiencies.
In retrospect, Jenkins's difficulties have at least partially been attributed to her suffering from syphilis, which caused progressive deterioration of her central nervous system. The ravages of her disease were compounded by side effects from poisonous mercury and arsenic treatments—the only therapy available for syphilis at the time. No effective treatment existed until the discovery of penicillin; by the time it became generally available, Jenkins' disease had progressed to the tertiary stage, which is unresponsive even to antibiotics.[2]
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