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By Andrew Gans
21 Dec 2004
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| Dame Edna Everage |
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| photo by Greg Gorman |
That glittering gigastar, Dame Edna Everage, will make her Metropolitan Opera debut December 31.
Everage, who is currently delighting Broadway audiences in Back With a Vengeance, will be part of the Metropolitan Opera's New Year's Eve gala performance of Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville). Everage will appear in the second act of the Rossini opera during the "music lesson scene." The scene, which finds Rosina and Count Almaviva in a lovers' tryst, will boast the unique vocals of Everage.
The Met's production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia features Katarina Karnéus as Rosina, Matthew Polenzani as Count Almaviva, and Dwayne Croft as Figaro. Maurizio Benini conducts the 7:30 p.m. performance.
Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance, which played a successful tryout this past summer at San Francisco's Curran Theatre, officially opened on Broadway November 21. Devised and written by Barry Humphries with additional material by Andrew Ross, Dame Edna also features Wayne Barker as the Master of the Dame's Musick; the Gorgeous Ednaettes, Teri DiGianfelice, and Michelle Pampena; and the Equally Gorgeous TestEdnarones, Randy Aaron, and Gerrard Carter.
Dubbed Australia's First Lady, Dame Edna is the invention of Barry Humphries, a successful character actor in Europe and Australia as well as an esteemed landscape painter. Some of Humphries' theatrical credits include roles in Waiting for Godot, Oliver! and Maggie May, but his most successful outings have been as Dame Edna, a character he created in 1956. Humphries was given the Order of Australia in 1982 and was endowed with an Honorary Doctorate of Griffith University in Australia in 1994. The Dame found success on Broadway during the 2000 season with her Tony Award-winning show, Dame Edna: The Royal Tour.
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