LIZA BACKLASH

The fact that an audience can actually sit through a Liza Minnelli performance is either a comment on their masochism or a wake-up call to get their hearing checked (“She’s Still Chasing Rainbows,” by Patrick Pacheco, July 20).

Thank goodness for Gary A. Catona, Minnelli’s voice teacher. (Talk about a job from hell.) He wants people to tell her the truth. Since I am not on her payroll, I don’t have to pretend that the loss of her incomparably torturous voice would be a bad thing.

WILLIAM ASKEW

North Hollywood

*

Minnelli, unfortunately, suffers from the bane of many would-be and established “vocalists.” She has a tremolo (vibrato) in her voice so pronounced that she often sounds like a voice impression of Katharine Hepburn.

As a child of famous parents, she has been indulged by critics and the public alike. But celebrity or no, moving on stage with strident steps, flailing one’s arms wildly to punctuate notes and hollering in general do not a singer make.

GERI DOW EISENBERG

Redondo Beach

*

Interesting that the generation who did not actually see Minnelli with her mother, and so do not connect them, have wisely rejected her.

As much as we all wish she was Judy Garland, she is not. And with the benefit of time, can’t we at last admit what a sad, pathetic joke she has always been?

ARTHUR HORTON

Sherman Oaks