Meryl Streep Plays The Part Of The World’s Worst Opera Singer In ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’ [Videos]


Hollywood actress Meryl Streep is good in any role she plays, even as a hilariously tone-deaf opera singer, it seems.

We’ve heard Meryl Streep sing before, particularly in the films Mamma Mia! and Ricky and the Flash, but this is the first time we’ll get to hear her sing really, really badly, and it is likely to be hilarious.

In the upcoming Stephen Frears film Florence Foster Jenkins, Streep plays the title role, that of a New York City socialite of the same name whose soprano vocal skills left a lot to be desired and earned her the title of the worst vocalist of all time.

The film is based on a true story, and while the lady was apparently a child prodigy pianist and performed extensively as such, Jenkins was also reportedly far more well known and ridiculed for her lack of rhythm, pitch, and tone; her aberrant pronunciation; and her generally poor singing ability.

According to the official synopsis for the film, the singing voice she heard in her own head was beautiful, but for anyone listening to Jenkins, it was just plain hilariously terrible.

Her husband and manager, St. Clair Bayfield (played in the movie by British actor Hugh Grant) is an aristocratic English actor who wants to protect his beloved Florence from the truth of her complete lack of singing talent. However, he is faced with his greatest challenge ever when Florence decides to give a public concert at Carnegie Hall in 1944, to show off her impressive vocal skills to the world.

Rather tragically, the real Florence suffered a heart attack two days after the Carnegie Hall concert and died a month later, on November 26, 1944, at the age of 76.

The film is not your usual, run of the mill music biopic, however, and is more a comedy than a drama. Besides Meryl Streep playing the tone-deaf Florence, and Hugh Grant playing her aristocratic husband and hardworking manager, Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory), Nina Arianda (Midnight in Paris) and Rebecca Ferguson (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation) also star in the film.

Regrettably, we don’t actually get to hear Meryl Streep singing really badly in the teaser trailer included below, but we do get to see the shocked and funny reactions of the audience instead. This is no doubt to build up the anticipation for the actual movie itself.

At present, the film Florence Foster Jenkins is set for release by Paramount Pictures in the U.K. on May 6, with no official U.S. release date announced as yet.

While you can’t actually hear Meryl Streep singing very badly in the teaser trailer above, you can get an idea of just how hilariously terrible Florence Foster Jenkins’ singing skills were in the music video included below.

While Meryl Streep wasn’t lucky with an Oscar nomination for Ricky and the Flash this year, maybe she’ll have better luck in the next Academy Awards for her hilarious efforts in Florence Foster Jenkins.

Meryl Streep has certainly caused a stir recently, what with the whole ongoing #OscarsSoWhite controversy. As the Inquisitr reported, the social media was in an uproar after Streep announced at the Berlin International Film Festival, “We’re all Africans really.”

To be exact her full comment was, “The thing that I notice is that there is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture,” adding, “And after all, we’re all from Africa originally, you know. We’re all Berliners; we’re all Africans, really.”

Despite the fact that everyone seemed to be so upset at her remark, a new hashtag arose from her statement as #MerylSoAfrican trended on Twitter for quite a while.

[Photo Meryl Streep via YouTube — Florence Foster Jenkins via Wikimedia Commons/no known copyright restrictions]

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