{"id":114,"date":"2008-10-22T14:51:55","date_gmt":"2008-10-22T14:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=114"},"modified":"2008-10-22T14:51:55","modified_gmt":"2008-10-22T14:51:55","slug":"fleming_warrior_princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2008\/10\/fleming_warrior_princess\/","title":{"rendered":"Fleming, Warrior Princess"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The following image was sent out this morning to publicize the Washington National Opera&#8217;s upcoming production of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dc-opera.org\/ourseason\/lucreziaborgia.asp\"><i>Lucrezia Borgia<\/i><\/a> with Ren\u00e9e Fleming (by an indy publicist, NOT the opera company, and NOT Ren\u00e9e&#8217;s publicist, that&#8217;s for sure):<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Borgia-Finale-armour-for-Mad-scene.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/Borgia-Finale-armour-for-Mad-scene.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center; display: block;\" height=\"623\" width=\"450\" \/><\/span> I mean&#8230;. <\/p>\n<p>As one journalist pointed out, is she an action figure, now?? ((stocking stuffers for the whole family!))<\/p>\n<p>Is this image &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/forbiddenplanet.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/Lucy%20Lawless%20Xena%20samurai.jpg\">on message<\/a>&#8221; for any of the parties involved? Who or what does it seek to represent? And it was sent to east coast classical press? Y-i-k-e-s. Yikes. <\/p>\n<p>Tip of the iceberg, but the &#8220;F&#8221; in Fleming could at least be capitalized.<\/p>\n<p>With a major production like this, it is interesting to think about the different publicity agendas involved; I, as an independent publicist, could not pitch Eric Owens at the expense of the larger picture of <i>Doctor Atomic<\/i>, for example, and similarly, The Met could not ignore his role in the production in their marketing and publicity efforts. It&#8217;s time consuming to get all the parties for any given artist or production on the same proverbial page, but when you don&#8217;t, this jpeg is the &#8220;page&#8221; you end up with. And when you do, of course, it can be quite powerful; we are all, in theory, working toward the same goals after all. <\/p>\n<p>Who knows: maybe this image was approved by all parties involved. Somehow, though, I doubt it. I leave you with this:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"1149781169_ersolarbig.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/1149781169_ersolarbig.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center; display: block;\" height=\"374\" width=\"250\" \/><\/span><i>Update 9pm-ish, same day: It seems the Fleming\/Xena image is actually one of the costume designs for the production and not, in fact, a flyer or poster. I&#8217;m told that as the opera progresses, Fleming&#8217;s costumes will become more and more masculine as part of the director&#8217;s vision for the character. That would be an interesting pitch, actually, if publications were allowed to print all the sketches. Too bad it wasn&#8217;t mentioned, and the warrior princess jpeg was e mailed out without context or explanation. <br \/><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following image was sent out this morning to publicize the Washington National Opera&#8217;s upcoming production of Lucrezia Borgia with Ren\u00e9e Fleming (by an indy publicist, NOT the opera company, and NOT Ren\u00e9e&#8217;s publicist, that&#8217;s for sure): I mean&#8230;. As one journalist pointed out, is she an action figure, now?? ((stocking stuffers for the whole [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}