Avant-garde vocal vixen Diamanda Galás, best known for Plague Mass, part of an AIDS-inspired trilogy, was the final speaker at the Kitchen's artists in-conversation summer series Tuesday (June 27) night in New York.
     During the Q&A she discussed the worst press conference she ever experienced, which was a few years ago. She quipped: "The only intelligent question anyone asked was why I sang in Greek and George Michael didn't. I said, 'Honey, he speaks a LOT of languages, you just don't know it yet.' They found out soon after."
     She slipped in a nasty aside about Nina Hagen at one point and when the audience gasped a bit, she declared, "I hate to be vicious, but viciousness gets people to understand more quickly." Further explaining her dislike of Hagen, she said of her: "Once you think you don't have to serve the work, the work gets tired of you."     
On a listener's question re: Galás' persona, she surprised everyone with this line: "I think I'm very funny, but I have this reputation for being tragic. If I wasn't doing tragedy, I'd be Milton Berle!" And she was serious, too.     
       Galás is continuing to take her "Defixiones, Will and Testament" show on tour this year, and will be appearing at Joe's Pub for three shows in July doing a sort of greatest hits show "La Serpenta Canta." Her upcoming opera, Necropolis, is still in the works. She is also on Alan Wilder's current Recoil album, Liquid.
(allstar, Dec. 16, 1999).

Article taken from here

back to articles index

back to main index