Prima Donna Witches

Being a leading lady, in any sort of leadership position, whether through necessity or choice or preferential treatment or coercion, can often lead a lady to acquire enemies.

Even when her manner is consistently and impeccably ladylike, a leading lady is likely to be detested by at least a few people, possibly including powerful ones.

By definition, a witch is a person with powerful enemies.

You may regard a prima donna as a diva, a queen bee, a vain and arrogant person, an unrealistic perfectionist, a rudely demanding bully, obnoxiously self-important and overbearing, rather than a supplier of quality leadership.

How do you define leadership, power, influence, authority, enemies and duties?

What have been your experiences of hatred, both as a supplier and as a recipient?

Enemies of quality leadership do not usually deserve any power at all, or any influence, or any authority.

But who has a duty to take power away from those who do not deserve it, and how?

The prima donna is required to contribute her considerable talents to a collaborative process involving many persons in supportive roles.

By definition, the prima donna, the first lady, has a substantial rolei n a particular project or performance or practice.

In many situations, a prima donna is a symbolic figurehead for promotional purposes, in much the same way as a leading man.

What are your expectations of a leading lady?

What are your expectations of a leading man?

How do you tell the difference between a genuine leader and a narcissist?

How do you tell the difference between justifiable criticism and unjustly derogatory statements?

How do you tell the difference between an outstanding performance and a domineering presence?

How do you tell the difference between a provider of reasonable guidance and an obnoxiously queen bee? 

What do you know about eusociality and anti-social behaviour?

What is your acquaintance with clipper ships and the clipper route?

What do you know about sailing cards?

What do you know about figureheads on ships?

What do you know about the traditions involved in naming ships, including the Cutty Sark and the Prima Donna, and HMS Unicorn?

What do you know about ship identifiers?

What do you know about traditions associated with the ceremonial launching of ships?

What do you know about the launching careers?

What do you know about stage names? 

What do you know about ensemble casts, all-star casts/teams and musical supergroups?

What do you know about tall ships?

What do you know about tall poppy syndrome?

What do you know about people regarded as superstars?

How do you distinguish between superstars and celebrities and people with charisma and people of extraordinary ability in the arts, the sciences or any other activity?

What do you know about opera boxes and box offices in relation to the rising popularity and declining career of a prima donna? 

What do you know about the development of star systems in the marketing of films, theatrical productions, operas and other cultural products?

What do you know about the marketing of, and through, prestige, particularly in terms of pricing?

What do you know about stage presence?

What do you know about hogging the limelight?

What do you know about stealing the show?

How do you know when someone has stolen a scene through talent?

How do you know when someone has upstaged someone unjustly?

What do you know about grandstanding and grandiosity?

What do you know about aristocrats and high society and the extremely wealthy and members of the upper class more generally?

What do you know about highly trained workers and how do you compare the majority of them with highly talented ones?

When, if ever, has someone stolen your thunder?

When, if ever, have you stolen someone's thunder?

Perhaps you have been accused, at least once in your life, of stealing someone's friend or partner or job or hope or career or idea.

What do you know about the psychology, and political consequences, of attention and attention seeking?

What is your attention span when you are happy? 

What is your attention span when you are unhappy?

What do you know about bankable stars and star vehicles and box office attractions?

What do you know about being in the public eye?

How do you define the meaning of 'public' presence?

How do you define the meaning of 'private' pleasure?

What do you know about giving the public pleasure?

What do you know about being a pleasant colleague, a good friend and a trustworthy companion?

What do you know about interpersonal pleasantness and political pleasantness?

How do you tell the difference between arrogance and stage fright?

How do you tell the difference between being camera shy and seeking to maintain privacy and seeking to hide potential scandals from the public and/or from public authorities?

There are many relatively public careers, some of which are of much more interest than others to mass media audiences, and mass media editors, and mass media owners, and mass media advertisers.

Perhaps you float between private worlds and the public sphere, or between various parts of the public sphere, as some sort of interpreter and/or reporter.

Perhaps people often feel apprehensive in your presence as a consequence of your reputation and/or the reputation of your employer.

Perhaps you have the ability to enter private worlds and/or public careers most people will never experience except as readers and audience members.

Perhaps you have a reputation for being glamorous and/or interacting with glamorous people.

Perhaps you have a reputation for being aloof even though you may, in fact, suffer from considerable shyness. 

What do you know about comportment?

Perhaps you have difficulty relaxing in private and in public. 

Perhaps you never actually experience real privacy.

Perhaps you have never been regarded as possessing a real talent.

Yet you may have an undeserved sense of entitlement in relation to various rights and privileges.

How do you identify universal rights and distinguish them from other rights?

How do you know when a special right is owed to someone as a consequence of ability or disability?

How have you been assessing the experience of reading this grimoire?

Perhaps you are experiencing impostor syndrome at present.

Perhaps you feel you are currently experiencing an undeserved privilege by achieving serendipitous access to this remarkable document.

What do you already know about working magic in minds and hearts and in the world more widely?

What is enchanting to you, and why?

Who have you regarded as a diva, and why?

When do you place a negative connotation on a term and when do you place a positive connotation on the same term, and why?

You may regard a self-important person as conceited, and possibly even deluded.

How do you distinguish between social importance, economic importance, military importance, political importance, moral importance, scientific importance, historical importance and cultural importance?

How do you distinguish between egoism and egotism?

How do you distinguish between legal privilege and social privilege?

Perhaps you tend to mistake privilege for prestige.

Perhaps you even mistake special rights for special privileges.

There is a considerable difference between reasonable influence and unreasonable manipulation.

Reasonable influence is associated with reasonable expectations.  Manipulation is not.

Responsible approaches to negotiation are associated with reasonable expectations.

Irresponsible approaches are not.

How do you know when a pose, even one associated with poise, is displayed as a way to gain unfair advantage?

How do you know when a behaviour in contrived/staged as a planned or semi-planned performance when the apparent intention is for it to appear natural/spontaneous?

How do you know when a spontaneous action is meant to be perceived as rehearsed?

How do you identify and assess popularity?

How do you identify and assess cliques?

How do you assess publicity machines and propaganda machines and other marketing machines?

How do you interpret narratives and genres and the meaning of success?

How do you assess social status and social standing?

How do you compare one queen bee with another?

What do you know about double standards?

What, if anything, have you observed about queen bee syndrome?

How do you assess the  insecurities people appear to express, whether in rehearsals or in other contexts?

What have you most recently been learning through guidance?

What have you most recently been learning through practice?

What do you know about fair and unfair competitive advantage?

How do you assess aptitude, attitude and occupational sexism?

Who is or was truly a prima donna and/or diva rather than a mass media caricature?

What do you know about Emma Calvé, Elizabeth Clendining, Florence Turner, May Buckley, Angelica Catalani, Catherine Tofts, Margherita de L'Epine, Mary Pickford, Sophia Dussek, Florence Lawrence, Elizabeth Billington, Fanny Corri-Paltoni, Caroline Barbot, and many other performing artists from long ago?

What do you know about the naming of ships and the description of ships? 

How do you reflect on meanings of one sort or another or another or another or another or another or another?

How do you reflect upon tragedies?

What do you know about commedia dell'arte, and how do you know it?

How do you reflect upon beliefs?

When, if ever, have you had a temper tantrum or at least expressed anger?

What do you know about misanthropes, psychopaths, bullies and elitists?

What do you know about social rejection, possibly including shunning?

What do you know about 19th century opera and 19th century ships?

What do you know about unpleasant children and irresponsible parents?

How do you compare a person described as a witch with a person described as a bitch?

What do you know about linguistic reappropriation, artistic appropriation and cultural appropriation?

How would you describe a lady, and who would you describe that way?

What do you know about Conventions and Inconveniences of the Stage by Gaetano Donizetti?

What do you know about the entertainment-industrial complex, the infotainment-industrial complex and the celebrity-industrial complex?

How do you distinguish between a bel canto singer and every other type of singer?

How do you distinguish between clipper ships and other merchant ships?

How do you tell the difference between a countertenor and a castrato? 

How do you tell the difference between a lost art, a lost painting, a lost film, a lost technology, a lost business, and a lost ship? 

How have you acquired your opinions about the lost and found?

What do you believe to be your responsibilities in relation to the knowledge and gifts you have acquired, particularly in relation to your talents?

Perhaps you judge people by their speaking voices.

Perhaps you judge people by their singing voices.

Perhaps you judge people by their body language.

Perhaps you judge people by their opinions.

Perhaps you judge people by their vocabulary.

Perhaps you judge people by their posthumous reputations.

Perhaps you judge male voices, and male careers, differently from female voices. and female careers, whether on the basis of aesthetics, ethics, wealth, popularity or politics.

Perhaps you judge everything in terms of novelty, not quality.

How do you perceive timbre, if you can perceive it at all? 

How do you perceive taste, whether orally or aurally or otherwise?

How do you judge opera seria, if not through the political and technical restrictions associated with it?

How do you judge attitudes to competition?

How do you judge attitudes to uniqueness?

Who has the voice of a heroine and who has the voice of a witch?

And why are witches never heroines, whether in operatic works or other arts?

How do you judge vocal types?

How would you judge Marietta Alboni?

How do you compare assessments conducted by suitably knowledgeable experts?

How do you compare those assessments with the assessments of fans, and competitors, and the marketing sections of organisations?

What do you know about the 'opera's baddest witches'?