this is awesome.

a piece of news has gone viral locally about a dutch restaurant displaying the portrait of filipino actor cherie gil mistaken as the real maria callas. read about the news article here. i do wonder how stupid and lazy the artist could get to not have done his research properly, with the internet giving him hundreds of photos of the opera singer and he ends up picking the wrong one. this, however, amuses and thrills me no end. we were fortunate enough to have watched cherie’s powerful performance as maria callas in terence mcnally’s master class in manila in 2008 and up to this day, i still get goosebumps thinking about it. this maybe akin to people watching for the first time lea salonga perform as kim in 1989 or experience ted neely rock it out in the cinema as jesus christ. it is life changing. char.

i dont know if i would want to berate the artist for being so stupid or if i should just praise gil (and her team of stylists) for fooling the dutch portrait artist. for good measure, here is a photo (lifted from the net; i dont own rights to any of the photos ive posted in this article with the exception of the screencap) of the real maria callas.