Blow the roof off
October 11, 2006Aretha Franklin’s place as the all-time great soul singer is beyond any challenge. Turns out there’s more to the story. I’d always thought of talent in pop music as a non-transferable asset (the cutout bins are littered with discs from pop stars who tried to record standards and ended up falling on their faces) but listen to this Crooks and Liars link to footage of Aretha filling in for Luciano Pavarotti at the 1998 Grammy Awards broadcast. She’s singing “Nessun Dorma,” the aria from Turandot that Pavarotti uses as his signature closing number. It’s definitely not grand opera: Aretha bumps along the bottom of her range during the opening, then relies on the backing chorus to help her through the soaring close. But she pulls it off, all right, and in her own style. Makes me want to hear more of this from her.
October 11, 2006 at 4:35 pm
I have the CD single of this. Not a great “Nessun Dorma”, but it was amazing to hear her do it.
The big take-away from this for me was reading that she had been working on it for a long time with her voice teacher — it hadn’t dawned on me that, even at her stage of success and fame, she’d be working with a voice teacher, and doing classical repertoire. It helped focus me into getting voice lessons and how to approach them.