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Julie Andrews?

 

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Little bit OT, but she hasn't sung as a soprano in more than two decades. Moreover, to the extent she sings at all anymore (i.e, not in public), she's more of an alto now.

After the miracle of Joni at Newport, knowing exactly how to use what she’s got, I’d be surprised if Julie couldn’t still charm anyone she might happen to sing to.

 

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I can never think of her without remembering the scene in Bedazzled where Peter Cook is putting scratches in brand new records. (AKA “vinyl” for you kids…). She’s lovely, I’m sure, but hardly inoffensive. In fact no soprano could be so categorized. My first wife is a soprano. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a coloratura D at 9:30 in the morning…

Bedazzled is almost criminally uncelebrated for its brilliance. (Plus Cook’s appearance as Drimble Wedge and the Vegetation is so prescient of at least the visual representation of Ziggy Stardust 5 years before the fact is outright shocking.) But the main thing here is that every time Cook as the Devil grants one of Dudley’s wishes he of course invokes “Julie Andrews”. Reacting to the saccharine sweet image she imbued after the massive success of the Sound of Music. It was perfect 1960’s zeitgeist.

(And, of course. Peter plays some pretty passable tenor to accompany Raquel Welch’s bar dancing during the final party sequence.)

 

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Wedge's lyric "you fill me with inertia" is a new favorite. Thanks!

By an odd coincidence that line was a favorite of an old chum from whom I inherited my modest latter day ‘Crat.