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Maria Elena Infantino Sings the Music
of Dalida |
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Maria Elena Infantino’s performance at the ARPA International Film
Festival could not come at a better time, as she continues to develop a
new one woman show (she is well
celebrated for her Édith Piaf show), this time featuring the music
of Dalida.
Infantino says, “Dalida sang in fourteen languages. She was the Disco
queen and she was huge in the seventies. She inspired me in the sense
that it is so dramatic and theatrical to represent her life on stage.
This year marks the thirtieth anniversary since her passing. I met the
actress and the director from the movie Dalida, which was filmed in
France and I thought why don’t I do this? She had such a wonderful life
and for two years I have already incorporated some of her songs into my
show. I sing “Bambino,” and “Paroles, Paroles,” the famous duet that she
did with Alain Delon. I think I will be doing a show about her very
soon, because everyone claims her. The Lebanese love her, the Armenians,
the Egyptians, the Italians and the French. I would combine all of these
cultures together and you can imagine the audience I would get with such
an international flavor. It would unite all of the nationalities
together.
The interesting thing about her is while I was choosing the material,
what do you choose? Every song has fourteen different versions in
fourteen different languages. There is a song that is originally in
French, is also in Italian, but it doesn’t speak to me in Italian. Do
you know which language it speaks to me in? It is Japanese. I will have
to learn (Japanese). I will also be singing in Arabic, in Spanish, in
French, but the pluses of this show will be Japanese and Arabic, because
it is something I am going to have to work on.
They say that you learn most of your languages by the age of seven and
those stay with you somehow. I am not seven anymore (she
laughs), but once you know five languages (as
she does) then you have an ear for languages and the pronunciation.
I won’t know until I get into this, but I have already learned a couple
of songs in Arabic. It probably took me longer than it would have taken
me when I was seven. Yes it might take longer, but I will get around it.
It is a work in progress. You are not talking about a whole language,
but you are just talking about a song, so I think I can do it. I will
let you know once I get there (she
laughs). It might be a little longer.”
The Dalida performance comes on the heels of Infantino unveiling a duet
recently with her father at Herb Alpert’s Vibrato Grill & Jazz in Los
Angeles. Her father, the famous Italian tenor Luigi Infantino passed
away when Maria Elena was seven years old, so this was both special and
a magical moment made possible by modern technology.
She explains, “I did a duet just like Natalie Cole did with her father
and Lisa Marie Presley with Elvis. Now apparently is the right time to
do it. I had this idea for a long time, but it was an idea that shaped
up now. I met this DJ and together we mixed a couple of my father’s
songs, modernized them and I did a duet with my father. I thought why
not just make it a funky new modern beat and duet with him.”
It was not the first time that Maria Elena Infantino shared the stage
with her famous father (we should
also point out that her mother Raina Nikolova is also a well-known Opera
singer).
“At Royal Albert Hall I was on the same stage that my dad had sung on
thirty years before that (Luigi
Infantino passed away when his daughter was 7.5 years old). It was
very emotional at the time in the sense of oh my god I am where he
walked. That is all I could think of. It was not emotional in the sense
that I could feel his presence, but that I knew wherever I was he would
be there with me and we were doing this together. I had the notion that
I was putting my feet where my dad had sung before. That was my debut
and so I thought it was a blessing and it was his way of telling me to
go for it. I was starting in style with my dad’s blessing and the way he
began.”
It was while she was visiting Robin Gibb at his home that she met Rocco
Buonvino and it turned into a very fortuitous meeting, as she gave
Buonvino her CD and he turned invited her to sing at Royal Albert Hall
concert in honor of The Beatles fiftieth anniversary.
“Later on Rocco said to me, your father was a big star in England and he
did a show at the Covent Garden, why don’t we do a show about your
father. I said why not? It was twenty years from his passing at the
time. We put this together and I contacted all of my father’s friends. I
got them a flight to London and they gathered as Infantino and Friends
and we sang my dad’s music.
There were Sicilian songs. I had my dad’s scrapbooks of his adventures
all around the world. It has a lot of cuttings from newspapers and he
would comment on them. I would read passages of his thoughts from around
the world. Then I would have my dad’s friends sing a few of his favorite
arias and that is how the show shaped up. That was the show at the
Leicester Square Theatre in the West End. That was my first producing
experience. I think it was in 2011.”
Because I have so much material from the scrap books and the recordings
maybe we will do a documentary about my dad and possibly a movie. These
are the projects that I have planned about my father.
I have something I am going to do about Julie Andrews. She started her
career in Leeds and I have the first page of the program where you seem
my dad’s photo, saying Luigi Infantino world-renowned tenor performing
tonight in Leeds town hall. Then you turn the page and there is a very
young Julie Andrews, at eighteen I think. She was singing in her debut.
My question to Julie Andrews would be how was it working with my father?
Did you actually duet with him? Did you just meet him? She was in touch
with my father, so I would like to know what it was like. It was her
very beginning.
It would be interesting to know these things and that will be part of
the documentary. Who knows? It is all out there, but it is shaping up.
My dad was very good friends with Laurel and Hardy. I have a photo of my
dad in the middle of Laurel and Hardy making them laugh. I have
telegrams on their letterhead addressed to my father. Then there is
another fun story, as my dad was friends with Peter Ustinov. A few years
ago I met Pavla Ustinov his daughter. She lives here in LA and we have a
joke, because my father and her father were very similar in shape and
lineage and the traits of the face. They were born the same month. There
is a funny interview that I need to find and they say to my father you
look very much like Peter Ustinov and he said, no, no he looks like me.
I have letters from Peter Ustinov to my dad and letters from my dad to
Peter. Peter would draw the Ustinov family wishes you Merry Christmas.
He would draw the Ustinov family and in one of them Pavla is holding a
balloon. When Pavla saw it she said that is me. She said I didn’t know
they were friends. I said since your father and my father always wrote
to each other and called each other hey my brother and my Sicilian
brother etc., she said that makes us cousins. Pavla and I are cousins,
there you go,” (she says laughing).
Conducting an interview with a gifted Italian singer and actress who has
a distinctly British accent is quite an eye-opener or ear-opener if you
will and that is exactly what this writer experienced during my
conversation with the delightful and superbly talented Maria Elena
Infantino who explains that her accent was shaped during her time in
drama school in England.
“They couldn’t understand what I was saying with my Italian accent, so
in drama school in England you do RP, Received Pronunciation lessons and
I felt like My Fair Lady. On
a Monday for two hours it was ahh, ohh, ooh (she laughs lightly). That
is how they shaped my accent,” says Maria Elena Infantino.
Infantino’s ties to the U.K. are strong, but we are getting ahead of
ourselves a bit, so let’s go back to where this all began.
“I was born at Lake Como, Italy, because my mom was recording and my dad
was working for radio in Lugano (Switzerland) and then we lived in Milan
until I was three, then at four my mom got a job at the Opera house in
Vienna (Austria) and I went to kindergarten there for a year. (Next) I
went to Bulgaria to live with my grandparents, my mom’s parents for a
few months, while my mom was relocating in Rome and finding a new place.
When I was four or five we moved definitely and permanently to Rome,”
she says.
This writer was ready for a nap after all of those moves, but Maria
Elena Infantino was not finished yet.
“My mom wanted me to have a French education, because my mother had a
German education. She had a German governess at the house in which she
grew up in Bulgaria. She said no, no, no too strict and I would rather
that you have a French education, so you can read (she
names a few French authors). I went to French school in Rome (she
starts to laugh), because that makes sense right?
Also, my mom started sending me since the age of seven to England for
two weeks every summer to study English, because she wanted me to be
fully immersed in the language. At seven she sent me to Yorkshire and to
summer school. When I was fourteen she started sending me to Ireland, to
Dublin, because we had family friends there and we are still friends
until this day. From the age of fourteen until eighteen I would go every
summer to Ireland. I spent my summers there for the language,” she says.
Infantino describes her childhood as, “My normality was the Opera House,
because both of my parents were Opera singers. When you are a child of
two Opera singers (her father was tenor Luigi Infantino) you think that
it is normal when there are a lot of people living at your house and
lots of people who are passing through. You get used to meeting a lot of
international people who are in the industry and who were Opera singers.
We would have so many parties at the house. When I was a child I would
see all of these Opera singers, violinists and pianists coming through.
At the table you would hear about seven languages and even if they
didn’t have a language in common. Someone would speak in German and the
other one (might) respond in French. To have that kind of upbringing
when you are not bound by just one language or one culture is very, very
eclectic and interesting. That is why singing for me is no big deal. I
don’t take it for granted, but it is normal for me to sing. After dinner
we would just get up, get our instruments and get by the piano and start
to sing.
The normal thing in the family was always singing, but I did not think
it was a career for me, because I knew what the Opera world was and
frankly I had it all of my life, so why go there?
I loved acting and ever since I was fourteen I went to the theater group
in Rome. On Saturdays and Sundays I would study acting. When I turned
eighteen my mom took me to London and I auditioned and I was accepted
into the Academy of Love and Recorded Arts (ALRA).
They said, you are Italian and you are eighteen. They were concerned
mainly, because of my accent. It was an Italian accent like this (for
the first time in our conversation we here a very strong Italian accent)
and you can’t do Shakespeare like that. (Your writer suggests that Romeo
and Juliet was set in Italy) You can’t do that for an entire year,”
Maria Elena Infantino says, while laughing.
She continues, “I went to the ALRA, because it also had the television
program and it was in a castle. The location was great (she
laughs). Imagine getting trained in a castle. It was a dream come
true and the teachers were amazing. The program had television and
musical theater. It had it all and it was one of the top ones. I did
Tennessee Williams and I did (Anton) Chekhov. It was from nine to five
every day.
Every trimester we
did a play and we did a role. They started giving me the leading roles,
so I never had really small stuff, even with the American plays that we
did. We did sword fighting in case we ended up in a movie in the real
world, such as Zorro or something like that.
It was very preparatory for actors, but we also had musical
theater four hours each week.
When I graduated from ALRA my first job was at ITV Yorkshire Television
in the television series Emmerdale.
The big job after that was singing at the Royal Albert Hall in front
of 5,250 people for The Beatles fiftieth anniversary in 2010 and with
Shirley Bassey, but I didn’t get any preparation other than rehearsal. I
was twenty-three and at that point my big break was singing in front of
more than 5,000 people. I had no previous training other than my
background and the musical theater that I did in drama school. I
rebelled against a (career in music) until I couldn’t rebel anymore,
because people knew I could sing.”
Maria Elena Infantino has already established her celebrity with one
woman shows, while performing the music of Edith Piaf and in fact she
experiences a rather convincing physical transformation as well, for her
performances.
How did that all get started Maria Elena?
“It started by chance when I was attending the Beverly Hills Playhouse
and I was taught by Howard Deutch. He said to me why don’t you do some
international stuff. I did a wonderful scene from the Woody Allen movie
Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Penelope Cruz, and funny enough the
character that Penelope Cruz was playing was called Maria Elena just
like me. I did a scene when she speaks half in Spanish and half in
English and it is a crazy, crazy scene. I started throwing things and
speaking in Spanish. It was hilarious. It is a dark comedy. Howie said
this is the most fabulous scene that you have done in class. Then he
said I would urge you to do more scenes like that with the languages
that you use, because you will also get parts for the different
languages that you know and the accents that you do with them.
I had an idea to do La Vie en
Rose, the movie and a scene from that. I took it to the next level
and I transformed it and did this as Édith Piaf to the point that Howie
didn’t recognize me for the first thirty seconds. He told me in the
feedback, I didn’t recognize you. You have the wig and you sing like her
and so I had to look at the schedule to see who was doing the scene,
because I had no idea that it was you. I think that you should start a
one woman show on Édith Piaf. Me, Piaf, I don’t know. Then I discussed
it further and in the class there was this fabulous director named Mandi
Riggi and she took
it upon herself to direct it and we came out with the play (concerning)
Édith Piaf’s philosophy of life.
You can’t in two hours encompass a play about the life of Édith Piaf. We
are talking about history and a French icon. I chose the songs that
suited me the most and that I got the most in my gut. I chose about
thirteen songs. Then I saw that it related to the concert that she
(performed) at Carnegie Hall, which by the way is another venue that my
dad sang at. People in New York didn’t
speak a lot of French, so later on she did Carnegie Hall in English and
French. I did the Piaf show
with La Vie en Rose half in
French and half in English, “Autumn Leaves,” half in French and half in
English. The people got a better sense of what she did when she came to
the States.
From there I got to sing in Washington for the ambassador of Bulgaria,
at their residence in Washington. Then I did it at the Rubin Museum in
New York and that is where I met Mike Stoller (of Leiber and Stoller
fame) and Corky Hale. Corky Hale was the first harpist female player for
Billie Holiday and she played the piano for Frank Sinatra, she did a
recording with Michael Jackson. Mike Stoller (of course) wrote for Elvis
as Leiber and Stoller. I met them (Stoller and Hale) at that event.
From then on I sang Édith Piaf’s songs (including) and at a big
celebration for Mike Stoller’s 80 th birthday. Tommy Tune was there, The
Coasters, Steve Tyrell and Ben E King. I still keep that email to this
day that said please brush up on your “Stand By Me,” which was written
by Leiber and Stoller (King also was a co-writer of the song) and sung
by Ben E King, because you will be required to join Ben E King on stage.
I was like what? Are you serious? Yeah, okay I’ll do it,” she says with
a tone like are you kidding, me? Do you think you really have to ask me
if I want to do it?
Maria Elena Infantino appears in the Jacqueline Murphy film
The Admired.
She talks about the movie, “I was an associate producer on it and we are
in talks of making the sequel. It is something that is coming up very
soon. Probably in February we
are going to start shooting.
The Admired is set in the 1930s and it is about
this actress played by Jacqueline Murphy and she is a bit like Veronica
Lake with costumes by (designer) Sue Wong. My character is Starlet Moore
and she is a rising star. It deals with the drama of Hollywood that
hasn’t changed since the thirties when some rise to fame and some fall
from fame. It is the business (side) and all of its ups and downs with
its drama. It is a good project and we won quite a few festival awards.
I have another one that has won a lot (of awards)
The Secrets of Joy and then
The 86 was shot in Caracas,
Venezuela and it is about a gang that existed in the eighties. It was
dangerous when I went to Caracas two years ago to shoot it, but we got
it made. Now Caracas is even more dangerous than what it was two years
ago. I was told not to bring jewelry and to bring the oldest clothes
that I had and not to show off. I was told to be just plain and simple
if I wanted to go unnoticed.”
Maria Elena Infantinio is a star on the rise. She is a gifted singer and
actress and she has personality in abundance. If you do not laugh at
least once while having a conversation with her, you probably are grumpy
or having a bad day.
Please take time to
visit the website for Maria Elena Infantino.
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Singer
and actress Maria Elena Infantino will be performing on November 3rd
(2017) at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood for the opening ceremony of
the ARPA International Film Festival’s screening of the film
Dalida. Dalida is based on
the life and career of the legendary singer by the same name and as
Infantino notes, of course she will be performing one of Dalida’s songs.
For
me singing is just normal and it is normal for me to go to the Opera
House and to hide behind the curtains, while listening to Pavarotti sing
and then go and say hello. I remember with Plácido Domingo we would have
a joke kind of thing. I would bump into him at the Opera houses of the
world. At first it was in Milano and then it was at Covent Garden in
London, then every time that we crossed each other it was like hola
hola, so we would say hola to each other all of the time. I saw him when
he sang here in LA, but then he almost didn’t recognize me, because I
had grown up. He remembers that little kid. I reminded him that it was
me who said hola. He sang with my mom in Mexico for the earthquake in
’84, so it was oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That is my childhood summed up,
international with all of these artists around me, many languages around
me and just getting up and singing whenever the time is right.