With the original Cunegonde out of the running, Madeline recognized a high-profile opportunity to jump-start her New York career, and she was determined to seize it. She and Michael Cohen coached her audition piece, Cunegonde’s “Glitter and Be Gay”. Both a direct descendant and a parody of Marguerite’s “Jewel Song” from Gounod’s Faust, the aria describes Cunegonde’s fall from aristocratic virgin to high-class courtesan, even as she takes solace in the jewels with which her sugar daddies have rewarded her. Wailing lamentations alternate with giddy laughter - staccati in alt. This coloratura tour-de-force has become both a calling card and a challenge for big-name sopranos such as June Anderson, Renee Fleming, Natalie Dessay, and Diana Damrau. Broadway’s Kristin Chenoweth sings it, too, drawing on her classical training. Yet Madeline’s rendition, heard on a pirate recording made during the concert in 1968, is possibly the greatest of them all, musically accurate and comically sublime.
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The pirate recording remains a fascinating document of Madeline’s interpretive skills. For example, there’s the line “Bracelets! Lavaliers! Can they dry my tears?” Most Cunegondes wail the line melodramatically, but Madeline varies her reading and fairly growls the word “bracelets” in disgust - and the audience roars with laughter. Tellingly, perhaps, “Glitter and Be Gay” is the rare number with almost no glitches: Madeline’s singing is utterly secure, and the orchestra plays smoothly despite lack of rehearsal. Listening, one misses much of the comedy in her performance, Peress says. “She juggled her breasts! It was amazing. She was outrageous. Onstage, you’d just let her out of her cage.” The “topper,” he says, was the moment when Madeline put the last of her jewels, a big ruby, in her bellybutton.
From the biography of Madeline Kahn I’ve been reading.
