While Wicked defies gravity at the box office, make sure to take time this week to watch a Netflix movie about a real-life hero who defied the odds to become the first woman musician in the New York Philharmonic.
Trailblazing double bassist Orin O'Brien was never one to seek the spotlight, but when Leonard Bernstein hired her in 1966, she inevitably became the focus of media attention and, ultimately, one of the most renowned musicians of a generation. Now, a new Netflix documentary, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, tells the remarkable tale. You can watch the trailer here.
Meanwhile, Maria, the new biopic of opera diva Maria Callas, opened last weekend to mixed reviews. Critics find Angelina Jolie’s performance spellbinding, while the movie itself is more problematic. The LA Times’ Amy Nicholson said, “Callas could sing three octaves, but the film is mostly one note,” while Richard Brody in The New Yorker finds that, “Maria gets lost in a tangle of clichéd bio-pic narrative stuffing, and runs superficially through the protagonist’s reminiscences by way of an embarrassing contrivance.”
To publicize the movie, Angelina Jolie attended the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Puccini’s Tosca with the New York Times. Jolie went backstage to meet the star soprano Lise Davidsen, and you can read how it went here. And you can see Davidsen sing Tosca, too, in this week’s encore screening in HD in cinemas around the country.
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