Still Oozing Out of Kenya

The news Monday was that Giuseppe di Stefano, "brilliant but erratic," tenor extraordinary, said to have been Callas's favorite partner both musically and (for what it's worth--It's in the Opera News) "romantically," succumbed, finally, in his villa outside milan, to the wounds he'd received in November, 2004 from a mysterious attack by unknown assailants in his villa in Kenya.   That, of course, led to a lot of googling in several directions. 

In the first place, regarding those mysterious attacks:  The Mungiki, Kikuyus out of power, claiming, probably with reason, descendance from the Mau Mau of the 1950's--they're all over the map in modern Kenya, persecuting and being persecuted.  Among the amusing things they do is murder and mutilate (or perhaps it's mutilate and murder) male children, whose genitals and "other parts" (presumably the livers and hearts) are never recovered, "owing, probably, to their having been utilized (European reporter's word) in [mysterious] initiation rites."  If you're a woman they'll "cut" (their word) you, i.e., circumcise, and if they have the time infibulate, you. Of course, being a tribal fraternity, they collect dues, most significantly by "manning" (their word) public toilets and demanding money at a time when it is most difficult to refuse them.  No one has exactly mentioned their practising cannibalism, as such; it takes, however, but little imagination to suppose that cannibalism (ritual, not subsistence) accounts for a good deal of the vanishing of those murdered male children's body parts.  So, perhaps Signore di Stefano, when he woke up from his coma in his villa outside Milan, months after the mysterious attack in his villa in Kenya--weighing one thing against another--counted himself lucky.  He must have known that he, or what was left of him, still had a few years to live.  

Anyway, that thought led me, via google, to a YouTube recording of di Stefano singing 'Vesti la Giubba.'   Which, of course, I did not listen to--It'll be a cold day in Hell when I'll listen to 'Vesti la Giubba'--but it set me wondering:  If Giuseppe di Stefano (whom proudly I confess never before to have heard of), why not Cesare Siepi?  And lo! There's a lot of Cesare Siepi on YouTube.  Beginning with an excruciating performance of 'Some Enchanted Evening'--for sheer horror right up there with Tebaldi's 'Eef ah-ee loaved you'--hearing that angelic voice, that seraphic musicality and intelligence parroting, with too-too perfect diction, the unintentionally dumb-ass banality of Oscar and Hammerstein, was like watching Lawrence Olivier do straight porn.  But, cutting that short, there was a God's Plenty of Siepi's Mozart, including the best version, maybe, that I ever heard of 'Aprite un po' gli occhi.'  The 'maybe' is because, just possibly, I prefer Thomas Hampsen's version; the reason being that Hampsen's Figaro, warm and beautiful and manly as he is, is not so fine-grained as Siepi's, and not so implausibly aristocratic--back to outclassing your material.  

And then, a final surprise, I found no death date for Cesare Siepi, born in Milan in 1923.  He must, therefore, still be alive.  Magari!  If so, and I can think of anything pleasant enough, respectful enough, interesting enough, to say to him, I'll have to write him a fan letter.  I figure I owe him.