Having been an opera affectionado for over three decades, one of the greatest regrets of my life is that I never got to experience the great Pavarotti in person. The brilliance of his tone, the power of his voice, and the absolute passion of his performances were unsurpassed among tenors of his day.
The one performance that time and again epitomized all of these qualities was Pavarotti’s signature aria, Nessun dorma from the opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini. Even if you’re not an opera fan, take the next 3 minutes and 10 seconds to savor the artistry of this extraordinary singer. (Sorry for the link, but I don’t know how to embed a YouTube screen):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VATmgtmR5o4
Adio, Luciano! You will be missed indeed.
I watched a show similar to American Idol being played in England. The winner got to sing in front of the Queen. A little 5 or 6 year old almost won it.
But in the end a certain cell phone salesman names pots won. And rightly so. He sang Nessun dorma and just absolutly blew everyone away. I like opera also. I fist started to look at it when I saw excalibur back in the late 70’s. The music playing when the sword is returned to the lady of the lake and Aurthor dies just blew me away. Turned out to be Richard Wagner. Twilight of the Gods. Funeral of Seigfried.
Anyway after hearing Pots I downloaded all Nessun dorma I could find. While I would give it to pots simply because he was a rank cell phone salesman, Pavarati was indeed awesome i his performance. I did a tribute to him on my radio show last night. He will be missed.
Good to see you up and moving again. I’m sorry i’ve not called much has happened lately good and bad. But I’m getting back to a normal routine now. So I’ll be more in contact. I’ll send you some you tube on Pots Later.
Paul Pots Winner of Britains got talent
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mn6HGMfxIVQ
Thanks for posting the Paul Potts video, celtictexan. It was a very enjoyable performance of Nessun Dorma indeed. I wasn’t expecting to see Simon Cowell as one of the judges!
Two impressions struck me while watching the video:
1) Did you happen to notice that Paul Potts is from Cardiff (the capital of Wales)? There is a great tradition of men’s choruses among the Welsh. I remember seeing Tom Jones (another Welshman) sing a traditional Welsh song accompanied by a Welsh men’s chorus on TV a couple of decades ago. Powerful stuff!
2) As good as the performances of Pavarotti and Potts were, I believe that at least part of the “goose bump factor” can be attributed to the music itself. Puccini was arguably the greatest opera composer of the late 19th/early 20th century. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m consistently moved to tears at the very end of La Bohème, when Rudolfo suddenly realizes that his beloved Mimi has died (I’m actually welling up just thinking about it!).
One last thought: You mentioned the Funeral of Siegfried from Wagner’s Twilight of the Gods. It took me a long, long tme to appreciate Wagner. To be sure, there are great moments, like the Funeral of Siegfried you mentioned, and the Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre (made popular by the helicopter scene in Apocolyse Now, as well as Elmer Fudd’s “Will the Wabbit!”). But Wagner’s operas taken as a whole can be tedious four- and five-hour ordeals virtually devoid of the kind of melodic arias that characterize Italian opera. The first two operas I ever saw live were Wagnerian: Tannhäuser and Parsifal; it’s a wonder I didn’t give up on opera after that. But in recent years, I’ve learned that Wagner has to be enjoyed on an entirely different level than say Verdi or Puccini. It’s hard work to prepare oneself for a Wagnerian opera, but it’s always worth it.
Here was the competition for Paul:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hkcE6Vy-e6c
But again you got to admit that for a untrained car phone salesman Pots was good.
1) Did you happen to notice that Paul Potts is from Cardiff (the capital of Wales)? There is a great tradition of men’s choruses among the Welsh. I remember seeing Tom Jones (another Welshman) sing a traditional Welsh song accompanied by a Welsh men’s chorus on TV a couple of decades ago. Powerful stuff!
To tell you the truth I noticed that he was really good, I noticed Simon come to attention in a way I’ve never seen before and I notice the stereotype of the British (Islanders)having really bad teeth. LOL
Some more about Wagner from Wiki. Youtube him also as there is much of his work on there. His work was based on all the old Norse legends and myths. The ring was 15 hours long and took 26 years to write.
Wagner’s late stage operas are his masterpieces that advanced the art of opera. Some are of the opinion that Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Iseult) is Wagner’s greatest single opera. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) is Wagner’s only comedy (apart from his early and forgotten Das Liebesverbot) and one of the lengthiest operas still performed. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring cycle, is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Teutonic myth, particularly from later period Norse mythology. Taking 26 years to complete, and requiring roughly 15 hours to perform, the Ring cycle has been called the most ambitious musical work ever composed. Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, which was written especially for the opening of Wagner’s Festspielhaus in Bayreuth and which is described in the score as a “Bühnenweihfestspiel” (festival play for the consecration of the stage), is a contemplative work based on the Christian legend of the Holy Grail.
Wagner drew largely from Northern European mythology and legend, notably Icelandic sources such as the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga Saga and the German Nibelungenlied. Through his operas and theoretical essays, Wagner exerted a strong influence on the operatic medium. He was an advocate of a new form of opera which he called “music drama”, in which all the musical and dramatic elements were fused together. Unlike other opera composers, who generally left the task of writing the libretto (the text and lyrics) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretti, which he referred to as “poems”. Further, Wagner developed a compositional style in which the orchestra’s role is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra’s dramatic role includes its performance of the leitmotifs, musical themes that announce specific characters, locales, and plot elements; their complex interleaving and evolution illuminates the progression of the drama.
Wagner’s musical style is often considered the epitome of classical music’s Romantic period, due to its unprecedented exploration of emotional expression. He introduced new ideas in harmony and musical form, including extreme chromaticism. In Tristan und Isolde, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system that gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, the so-called Tristan chord.
Here is the main competition of Pots also;
http://youtube.com/watch?v=En0A8KGMgq8
And some Wagner;
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ns9Mh9XZZ6c
And some just plain old good harmony;
http://youtube.com/watch?v=VUG8YlVjoMk