Madame would like to issue forth a few words on the matter of The Cowboy and the Mieskeit, and Madame would like an audience. So gather 'round, children, if you must.

Gioconda attended, no doubt about it, the same Fanciulla as the rest of you, but is mystified at the response. Well, no. Not mystified, knowing what any freshman does about the psychology of groups, but bemused just the same. Yes, on balance, Millo has a gratifying instrument. Gioconda does not these days eat red meat, but seems to recall that the sensation of biting into a thick-cut steak had something to do with the experience of hearing Millo's assertive middle register. And these days it is a rare sound she makes, or medium rare anyway.

So this is not to be your typical solipsistic "the emperor has no clothes" diatribe in which a left-out feeling listener trashes everything about a singer he doesn't get, but man does not live by meat alone and really, the woman gets a pass on an awful lot of things. That is what we find tiresome, along with perhaps the compulsory air of the hysteria that surround her (can it really be that several people shushed a bravo for one of the other singers? It can be we in the cheap seats heard it!)

And can Millo's high notes seriously have been described, albeit by one of her less-than-critical cronies, as golden? There was a pleasant frisson just before the first of them, watching the wind-up, and then hearing what was, as planned, a B [or is it a C? I have no idea.] Nobody but the worst of us wants to hear a disaster, but who can deny the excitement of knowing one might occur? The rest were, perhaps a bit surprisingly, all just as solidly on pitch, but high note after high note what Millo delivered was a sound that from anyone else would have been described as screaming. Loud is nice; we all like it, but it needs side dishes. These were just car-horn loud, and not much else to recommend them.

There's more to arte than voce, and here's the real conundrum for Madame G: Millo fans are exactly, but exactly, the ones that get on, let's say Hildegard Behrens, to pick a nigh historical example, for looking frumpy. Here was frump galore, and not a whisper about it. Madame would never pick on people for their looks, but this was about comportment and self-presentation and the like. The inevitable phrase is "no gay friends" but this we know for a fact not to be the case. Well, not even a change of gowns between acts!

And now we arrive at the real point. Gioconda made to faire le promenade like anyone else at these events, and chatted with an opera scene eminence who shall remain nameless. "Why," we cried, "can I not get into the spirit of this with everyone else?" "Because," said our clever friend, "she's just such a big drag queen; it's impossible to take her seriously."

And this, we are certain, is the problem. Larger-than-life gestures come in two flavors: those made in a moment of larger-than-life feeling that comes from singing larger-than-life music, and those manufactured for the queens in standing room. The former, well that's the reason Gioconda likes to go to the opera. The latter? That's just cheap Mildred Pierce stuff—that's camp.