IT’S HARDLY A RING OF CONFIDENCE FOR LESLEY

Friday December 5,2008

Soprano Lesley Garrett is furious after mobile phones in the audience wrecked her vocals on the opening night of new West End musical Carousel.

The opera diva has taken on the role of mother hen Nettie Fowle in the latest revival of the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein hit at London’s Savoy theatre.

But on the first night of the love story, her portrayal suffered a serious setback when her famous voice cracked as she sang the great ballad You’ll Never Walk Alone and she was forced to finish the song in a lower register.

Lesley spoke of her distress at the after-show party in London whisky bar Albannach and lambasted one careless member of the audience in particular.

“A mobile phone going off destroyed my performance,” fumed Lesley, 53.

“In that particular scene, there is so much emotion and it is so hard to do well. It had to happen just
near the end!”

One theatregoer remarked: “Phones went off several times during the first night. One in particular was very loud and unfortunately had the ringtone made famous by Dom Joly’s giant mobile phone sketch on Trigger Happy TV.

“Consequently, quite a lot of us couldn’t help but get the giggles. But I can see why Lesley is so angry, it was very distracting.”

But Lesley did not allow the rude interruption to ruin her enjoyment of the party, even pondering
taking off her clothes for a role.

“I would still do nude scenes if they were required,” said the singer, who once shocked opera audiences by flashing her bottom during a grand opera. “But they would have to be important to the story, I wouldn’t do them just for fun, like I did in the past.”

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