TRAILER: Florence Foster Jenkins

From the Telegraph:

Meryl Streep has often been celebrated for her extraordinary vocal talents. But in director Stephen Frears’s new film, the three-time Oscar winner takes on the voice of Florence Foster Jenkins, a soprano who has been dubbed the worst vocalist of all time.

Born in 1868, Jenkins was a child prodigy as a pianist who performed at the White House in her youth, and later worked as a piano teacher, but fell into poverty after an arm injury left her unable to play the piano. While living with her mother in New York, Jenkins began to dream of becoming an opera singer – despite her lack of natural talent. She fell in love with St Clair Bayfield, a British Shakespearean actor (Hugh Grant) who supported her ambition, and later became her agent and common-law husband.

Jenkins enjoyed a brief notoriety for her woeful performances: “People may say I can’t sing,” she once remarked, “but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.” More recently, she has found a second wave of fame online, with her recordings gathering hundreds of thousands of hits on Youtube.

(Tipped by JMG reader James)