RELATED STORY from page 81

14: Soprano
Inese Galante:

aDrte

7aitd i e s ] ad

town, iike parts
of Siberia."

Galante got a big
break when Zubin
Mehra, the famed
conductor, heard her

La
siritv
g i°anana dtric P ali ted
° her

"fantastic,"
He told me, tWhy stay here when
you can come to America and be a
star?'" recalled Galante, "So I did,"
She made her United States debut by
opening the Newport Music Festival in
Rhode Island and the Bard Music
Festival in New York. She also has sung
with the Los Angeles Philharmonic,
Florida Grand Opera and Baltimore
Opera. Her foreign engagements have
been in Israel, Germany, France,
England and the Netherlands.
In 1991, Galante, who is divorced,
and her daughter and mother moved
to Dusseldorf, Germany, at the
request of the artistic community
there. "There are more opportunities
for productions and concerts, and I
have more of a chance to practice my
socialism," she explained.
"I think the socialist system is best
for cultural activities and talented per-
formers. Socialism gets the govern-
ment involved in the production and
distribution of goods, and I think
that's the best system.
"The government loves talented
people and we seem to get advantages
over others. It gives us a better chance
to find harmony in our lives. In my
case, I can be a cosmopolitan person
of the world."
Despite Galante's success, her
mother still isn't happy with Galante's
career and continues to regret the fact
her daughter never became a doctor.
"She's worried about my gypsy-like
existence, always on the go and travel-
ing around the world to different
engagements," Galante said.
'As a professional person, I could
stay home and live a normal life. Now,
I keep irregular hours and I always
have to worry about what conductors
and critics think of my performances,"
Galante has recorded eight compact
discs, including one with 18 Jewish
songs sung in Yiddish and Hebrew.
"Pm really not too fluent in those lan-
guages, but I learned the words and
made the recordings before my father
died three years ago — because he
asked me to do it," she said. ❑

— Bill Carroll

Inese Galante performs the role of
Mimi in La Boheme 2 p.m.
Sundays, Oct. 15 and 22, and 8
p.m. Friday, Oct. 20.

Behind The Scenes

Native Detroiter did film
research for "Into The Arms
of Strangers."

SUZANNE CHESSLER

Special to the Jewish News

Viewers of Into the Arms of Strangers:

Stories of the Kindertransport, the docu-
mentary opening today at the Maple
Theatre, will see archival film clips
researched by Corrinne Collett, who
grew up in Michigan, graduated from
Livonia's Stephenson High School and
studied at Temple Kol Ami.
Collett, the daughter of Harriet and
Ralph Abramowitz of Novi, has built a
career based on historical film research,
including work on ABC's The Century
series, a similar project for Japanese tele-
vision and displays for the Museum of

Jewish Heritage in New York.
"I like this film because it is a story of

rescue," Collett says about the docu-
mentary that recounts experiences of
10,000 children sent from Germany to
England to escape the Holocaust.
"I also like that the filmmakers were
concerned about the psychological
effects of the transport and weren't try-
ing to retell the historical facts without
going further. They were trying to create
the mood of the children as they went
through their journey."
When Collett approaches an assign-
ment, she looks for film clips that have
not been widely seen, and located one
of only two genuine pieces of
Kristallnacht footage as well as various
segments with children.
Film research was not Collett's origi-
nal career goal. She began by accepting
a research internship for the cold-war
film Are We Winning, Mommy? as a stu-
dent at Hunter College in New York. A
comparative literature major, Collett's
theater internship had been cancelled.
"I had a lot of fun and worked in a
film library in New Jersey," recalls
Collett, 43, married to Howard Sharp,
who does similar work. "I learned from
the head librarian, and it was like get-
ting a master's degree," says Collett,
who uses her first husband's surname.
Collett added clients early by contact-
ing moviemakers suggested by the pro-
ducer of her first film. Soon, she had to
do very little asking and was turning
down projects.
"I'm currently working on a Bill
Moyers production for public televi-
sion," reveals Collett, who maintains a
home office in New York State to stay
close to her son, Simon, 5. "It's about
the Hudson River Valley."

❑

Some
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their 1st birthday.. .

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