Tuesday, July 04, 2000
Inmates in the opera draw some attention
Going to prove once again, surprise the opera crowd and dang, you might land on TV.
A surprise like Cincinnati Opera staffer Carolyn Giles delivered when she contacted Helen Magers, program director at River City Correctional, and asked her to provide supernumeraries (non-signing extras) for Aida.
River City is a community based correctional facility housing 200 felons sent there instead of prison. It's a four to six-month program that offers counseling and help with substance abuse.
But it's still, well, jail.
So people were surprised when Giles went there recruiting. And more surprised when she got 21 volunteers.
And now this: Inside Editionread it in last Tuesday's column, contacted Evelyn Stubbs, opera public relations director, and asked if it could do a story. According to Stubbs, they want to shoot at the facility and backstage, interview the guys, Magers and artistic director Nick Muni.
“I'm waiting for details, and Helen needs to OK it, but if she does, it's a go,” Stubbs says.
Oh, and this report from arts patron Peggy Kahn, who's been a super for a zillion years and who will appear in Aida, which has been in rehearsal for a week: “The guys are amazing. They're better behaved than most of us, and they're working harder. And they're pretty buff, too.”
Stageful of Beatles: Well dang, would you look who just opened for the Beach Boys in Columbus at Beulah Park in front of 40,000 people? None other than Cincinnati's BackBeat.
BackBeat, recall, is the quartet of teens (ages 10 to 15) who do all Beatles all the time and never mind that the Beatles were long gone before they were born. All four — Zack, Jake and Steve Snyder and Patrick Helwig, live in Anderson Township.
Most of their gigs are local — Taste of Blue Ash, WGRR Oldies Fest — though they did make it to the Rosie O'Donnell's show last January and caused quite the stir.
Caused one last week at Beulah Park, too, when they opened the Big Bear Balloon Festival.
As always, they did a 30-40 minute set and charmed the crowd. Charmed the Beach Boys too, who dragged them onstage to join in an encore of “Back in the USSR,” the Beatles song the Beach Boys have been doing since the '70s — still before the kids were born.
BackBeat's Beatles fascination comes from their dads: Steve Snyder, father of Zack, Jake and Steve, and Steve Helwig, father of Patrick, are Beatles fans and musicians too: During the '60s and '70s, both played in the oh-so-popular Haymarket Riot.
Heard around town: “This is great. I'll finally be able to read the book I wrote.”
Huh?
That would be Cincinnati author Jeff Marks at a Mount Adams Bookstore Cafe signing of his new Mayhem and Magnolias (Silver Dagger, $15), 13 short stories by 13 authors, all mysteries set in the South.
He was talking about his book on Craig Rice, a 1940s mystery writer — female — who was herself a mystery. Even today, people dispute her real name, her number of marriages, number of kids and year of birth.
In 1994 a French publisher asked Marks to do a Rice bio. He did, but couldn't read it because it was published in French. So his copy has been gathering dust.
Now this: Delphi books has gobbled it up: Who Was That Lady is now due in April 2001. The book is based on interviews with friends and family as well as Marks sniffing out dusty documents in courthouse basements.
Rice (My Kingdom for a Hearse, Trial by Fury) wrote 14 novels and a mountain of short stories. She was right up there with Agatha Christie in sales in the '40s.
Knip's Eye View appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at (513) 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
