The Opera Quarterly Spring 1993. 9/3 (dedikált példány) [antikvár]

Da capo . the editor Church ain't out till the fat lady sings. —Fabia Rue Smith and Charles Rayford Smith, Southern Words and Sayings, 1976 The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings. —Dániel John Cook, television newscast, San Antonio, Texas, April 1978 It ain't over until the fat lady sings. —Dick Bottom, coach of the Washington Bullets, 1978 Th e female opera singer, as objectified by the world at large, has had her name taken in vain yet again—you know, the feisty contention that "It ain't over until the fat lady sings," a statement that has bccome a genuine mantra in the world of sports. The games of the twenty-fifth Olympiad, which have been over for just one week at the time of this writing, produced at least two on-camera interviews in which American athletes (a volleyball player and a basketball player) made automatic reference to the fat lady's vocalism as the eleventh-hour occurrence that would signal the turning of the tide in and denouement of a competitive exhibition. The athletes, naturally, were merely parroting a phrase that had become a familiar old friend, a ritualized response for filling awkward pauses, rather üke "This team has come here today to play ball!" They were not really advocating or anticipating the appearance of a prima donna at the end of a sports match, and, as men, they seemed quite unaware of the chauvinistic nature of the familiar invocation—there are, after all, "fat" male singers, too. Nevertheless, under these very specific circum-stances, the image that was conjured up for at least one viewer proved irresistible: Montserrat Caballé as deus ex machina to the "Dream Team"! It was only coincidence, of course, that the 1992 Olympics were held in Spain and that Caballé, not only her country's but her entire generation's great-est example of the archetype referred to by the athletes, was one of those who