New look Dawn: fat lady who DOESN'T sing steals show at opera
In this case the amply proportioned lady didn't sing. But for the five minutes she was on stage in her operatic debut, Dawn French stole the show from those who did.
In Donizetti's La Fille Du Regiment, French plays the non-musical role of the Duchesse de Crackentorp, whose son is due to marry the title character, an illegitimate noble woman adopted by a French army regiment.
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The duchess is a comic part, and French wrings as many laughs as she can from her brief time on stage. She commands the auditorium, oozing hauteur.
When angry she pivots her entire torso from the waist to turn her eyes on the object or her displeasure, or rocks on her feet like a truculent sumo wrestler.
She lapses into brusque English for lines like: "Don't be stingy with the chocolate fancies!"
It is surely no mistake that on her second appearance, her wig looks like a twist of soft ice cream. The scripted ad libs, and the knowing asides to the audience and the orchestra, play on French's established comic persona.
It's not subtle, but it looks like a masterclass in understatement compared with what passes for humorous acting in opera.
Not that her co-stars should worry about their jobs just yet.
Opera is not yet a pro-celebrity art form like theatre, where Sharon Osbourne can appear in The Vagina Monologues and pretty much anyone can star in Chicago.
The warm hand that French got on her entrance was as nothing compared with the raucous applause for Peruviantenor Juan Diego Florez after he hit nine top Cs in a single aria, or for energetic French soprano Natalie Dessay, who plays the title role, at the curtain call.
But it's a measure of French's popularity that her scene-stealing cameo seemed to add piquancy.
After the show, 49-year-old French said: "It was absolutely fantastic to be working with these people. They are inhumanly talented.
"I have a friend I go to opera with and when I was offered the part he said "you'd be mad not to do it". I kept worrying in rehearsals that I was going over the top but Laurent (Pelly, the director) said it was okay."
