Opera Singer Regrets ‘Break a Leg’ Adage???
Never mind Roger Federer and Andy Roddick, last weekend’s truly impressive feat of endurance came courtesy of US opera singer Joyce DiDonato, who completed her performance in the Barber of Seville at the Royal Opera House despite the inconvenience of a broken leg.
DiDonato, a highly rated mezzo-soprano, suffered the injury when she slipped during the first act. Thinking it was just a sprain, she nobly soldiered on with the aid of a walking stick and the helping hands of her co-stars, before discovering after the end of the three hour show that she had broken her fibia.
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“Apparently this kind of injury requires absolutely no weight to be put on to it, so I’m crossing my fingers that not too much damage was done” DiDonato wrote on her blog, adding “from here on out, I declare that no-one, please, ever, ever, ever, wish me again, in the American fashion, to ‘break a leg’.”
She will take to the stage in a wheelchair tonight. The production is being screened to a small number of UK cinemas next week (15 July 2009).
