Marion Lignana Rosenberg / c. Maeghan Donohue
Editor’s Note: Opera Bloggers’ Month continues with a Q&A with the always gracious and utterly captivating blogger, the intrepid Marion Lignana Rosenberg.
Many cyber-savvy opera lovers identify Marion Lignana Rosenberg with the striking profile of Maria Callas via her Twitter profile @revisioncallas.
Marion Lignana Rosenberg is the esteemed host of the blog of the same name–”Re-visioning Callas” which blends history, insightful commentary, and homage celebrating opera’s greatest diva Maria Callas, using a multi-media platform.
However, Marion also authors the blog Verdi Duecento, which she created to recognize Giuseppe Verdi in anticipation of the bicentennial of his birth in 2013.
Marion is an award-winning writer, blogger, and translator. At WHRB in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she produced what likely remains the most comprehensive broadcast ever of Verdi’s music, including many then-unpublished compositions.
Marion has published extensively on opera and the performing arts including her essay “Re-visioning Callas,” which won a Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award. She also wrote the entry on Maria Callas for Notable American Women: Completing the Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press).
An acclaimed broadcaster and journalist, Marion has contributed features, reviews, and essays about the arts to Newsday, Time Out New York, Salon.com, Forward, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Magazine, Opera News, and Playbill. Besides her programs for WHRB, she has offered commentary on WNYC’s “Soundcheck.”
Marion’s writing has appeared in the programs and season books of the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, and other companies in the United States and Europe.
So it is with great pride and distinct pleasure that I welcome Marion to Operatoonity.com.
"Re-visioning Callas" by Marion Lignana Rosenberg
O: When did you start blogging and why?
Marion: I started blogging back in 2002, first as a way to give vent to political rage, and then to get the word out about my freelance articles for Opera News, Time Out New York, and other publications.
O: What is your biggest challenge? Biggest thrill?
Marion: My biggest challenges are my tendencies to monomania and perfectionism. I curate blogs about Callas and Verdi and related Twitter feeds. In the past year, I have translated a non-fiction book (Carlo Rovelli’s The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy) and a 150,000-word novel. I’m completing two book proposals. I’m always working on smaller translation projects (for example, English texts for Gianmaria Testa’s forthcoming CD, Vitamia). And I’m looking for a full-time position! I’m not complaining, but if I had my druthers, I would do one of these activities at a time with obsessive devotion. Instead, I breathe deeply, remind myself that “the best is the enemy of the good,” and carry on!
My biggest thrill is “meeting” so many deeply kind and intelligent people from all over the world. Thanks to my Callas blog alone, I correspond with lovely individuals in Greece, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Iran, Brazil, Venezuela, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere.
O: What is your favorite post and why?
Marion: From my Callas blog, I like Callas de cire, Callas de son because, well, who knew that the great Serge Gainsbourg had (unwittingly, I’m sure) shed light upon Maria Callas’s existential dilemmas?
From my Verdi blog, I’m proudest of Massimo Mila on Verdi I. While study of Verdi and his music has flourished in the past thirty years, there remains a great deal of enormously important work by Italian scholars and critics that is largely unknown in the English-speaking world.
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