SOPHIA DALLE

ENTERTAINMENT: THE MONTHLY HERALD SPECIAL. JUNE 2004

SOPHIA DALLE: THE DRAMATIC FATALE CHANTEUSE WHO MAKES YOU HEART THINK AND YOUR MIND FEEL!

By Maximillien de Lafayette. Interview by Peggy North

She is POWERFUL, truthful, tragic, talented and deserves your utmost attention and respect. Sophia Dalle is a captivating walking musical drama.

Sophia Dalle was operatically trained in Florence, Italy and in New York City. She studied with Maria Ferrar who received acclaim for her work with La Scala in Milano. She has also studied with Mara Waldman, who has conducted for the New York City Opera and Isabella Korbus, mezzo star from Poland. Over the past year, Sophia has been collaborating with her accompanist Stephen Cornine on her opera as well as her original torch songs, while appearing at "Don't Tell Mama," one of the oldest and most original cabarets in New York. Her style has been described as operatic jazz. The original lyrics she wrote or inspired express a truthful emotional substance and human depth.

Her current repertoire consists of her favorite songstress Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich. She sings in English, French and German . Considered an underground diva, "Ms Dalle sings for intimate audiences who relish in the Europe of old and hunger for the depth and pathos her persona demands and her lyrics and interpretations of standards possess." as one critic so profoundly and truthfully wrote. To her fans and entourage, she is known as "Diva of the Underground", New York City Underground, that is. Mr Sidney Myer, the booking manager of "Don't Tell Mama" cabaret in New York wrote: " Of the countless cabaret acts that I have seen over the last 30 years - and booked over the last 20 - Sophia presents an evening and an experience that is sui generis, truly one of a kind. If one had to categorize her - I believe she would be called "a chanteuse tragique". Sophia presents a repertoire which allows her to explore the heartbreak of love and life with a depth of emotion and feeling which often makes it indistinguishable from a woman expiring from overwhelming sorrow or an artist giving all for her art. Ironically, Sophia possesses a wicked wit and self-deprecating humor which emerges in her interplay with the audience (between arias/songs) that is unexpected in one whose currency is the dark side of life. And speaking of audiences, Sophia's shows also have taken on the air of a 1960's "Happening" or "Love-in" with traces of a revival meeting as her fans profess their love and other extravagant declarations as the evening unfolds." But Sophia Dalle is more than that. For she is a delightful crazy existentialist philosopher, a trooper on the roads of life, a warm, sinfully and magically captivating artist...and a diva larger than life and the boundaries of un-chartered success. Diva Dalle is a liberal and a rebel. And the fact that, no awards were ever and never given to her and a wider recognition was hardly granted to this magnificent artist, "pushed" me further and stronger to write and write more and more about her. Perhaps, in this context, I became a rebel myself. And because, she is still waiting and waiting for somebody in the music industry who has some sort of common or uncommon sense, guts, taste and "tiger in his tank" to "cut" or "free" a record deal with her and nobody yet, showed up to give this fabulous artist a break or a chance she honestly and righteously deserves , makes me wonder whether success in life or in a career is a right you fight for, a mockery of destiny, a splash of luck which blurs for a brief moment in the dark corner of your patience and struggle but, incomprehensibly escapes to shine elsewhere, somewhere else, over the horizon, the sky and the career of another artist who is not as good as you are, as talented as you are, as delightfully mad as you are, and as uniquely creative as you are...and this record executive who never showed up...and this lazy and blind lady luck who did not knock hard enough at Sophia's door awake in me the demons and sink my hand in tons of ink to grasp all the ink I can grasp and fill the pages with Sophia Dalle's praise and homage, for honestly and strongly I believe in this woman!

The article continues on the following pages.