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Ira Siff provides gender-bending humor in MOT's
"The Daughter of the Regiment.

• Limited editions hand-
signed and numbered
80 year archive

BILL CARROLL

Special to the Jewish News

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lie's The Duchess

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male opera performer — who
bills himself as a woman —
will add some comic relief
when he takes on a woman's role in The
Daughter of the Regiment, the final opera
of Michigan Opera Theatre's spring sea-
son, opening Saturday, June 4, and con-
tinuing for six performances through
June 12 at the Detroit Opera House.
It will be a welcome change of pace
for Detroit-area opera-goers, many of
whom sobbed their way through the
recent world premiere of Margaret
Garner, the bleak and tragic story of
murder, lynchings and rape in the pre-
Civil War slavery era. Gaetano
Donizetti's The Daughter of the

Regiment "is a lighthearted comic
opera — a love story rich with humor,
full of laughs and good cheer, with
beautiful music," beamed David •
DiChiera, MOT's general director.
Jewish opera veteran Ira Siff, a versa-
tile and colorful performer, who also is
known as Mme. Vera Galupe-Borszkh,
a Russian diva, was given the role of
the Duchess of Krakenthorpe two
weeks ago after the actress scheduled
to play her dropped out of the show.
The NeW York-born Siff, 59, also is an
opera director, vocal coach, costume
designer and even a feature writer and
DVD critic for the Opera News.
"But I won't have a singing role in
Regiment, it'll mainly be humorous
appearances throughout the show," he
said in a rolling interview from a lim-

Wilder Days

Actor reveals personal anecdotes in new memoir.

MARTIN NATCHEZ

Special to the Jewish News

T

ake a comedic film actor like
Gene Wilder, who has
inscribed his name on a scroll
of silver-screen roles such as The

Producers, Young Frankenstein, Willie
Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and
Woman in Red and what do you get?
What you get is his just-published
autobiography, Kiss Me Like a Stranger:
My Search for Love and Art (St. Martin's
Press; $23.95), that rarely finds him liv-
ing on the funny side of the street.
"I'm not very funny in real life ...
but I'm happier than I've ever been in
my life," the 71-year-old Wilder says,
attributing his spouse of 14 years,
Karen, a Mormon, with helping him
to rebound from the much-publicized
loss of his third wife, Detroiter Gilda
Radner of Saturday Night Live fame.
At 43, Radner succumbed to ovarian
cancer on May 20, 1989.
A decade later, Wilder was diag-
nosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma
and underwent successful chemo treat-
ments that have staved off the disease.
He continues to be in total remission.
But don't get this reviewer wrong. Kiss

Me Like a Stranger is not a memoir that
is obsessed with life and death. Neither
is it a typical Hollywood expose of
bombshells and tattletales. Instead,
Wilder chose to link together remem-
brances of so-called "happy accidents"
that changed the course of his life and
led him to faith in fate — apparently,
even more than in his Judaism.

The Acting Bug

Wilder was born Jerry Silberman in
Milwaukee. He and his older sister,
Corrine, were the children of Russian-
Jewish parentage, and Wilder briefly
recounts that their religious upbringing
was little more than visiting their grand-
parents for Passover seders and going to
the synagogue on the High Holidays.
It was after his mother suffered a
heart attack that 8-year-old Wilder dis-
covered he had a knack for humor. Her
doctor sternly warned him: "Don't
argue with your mother — you mi ght
kill her! Try to make her laugh," and the
doctor's orders worked. Her son jested,
joked and downed for her, often bor-
rowing shticks and routines from one of
his early idols, entertainer Danny Kaye.
Before entering his teens, he was
sent to a military school in •