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How far can you make it?

8K views 60 replies 18 participants last post by  wirorg 
#1 ·
Silly thread I just had to post after clicking on this:

I made it 13 seconds and felt too embarrassed for Bocelli to continue. I know it's not fair to hold him to any kind of real operatic standards but by that same measure he shouldn't be trying to sing Pour Mon Ame
 
#3 ·
I won't even try. I can't stand him, not a single second. It's Friday, it would ruin my weekend! I don't want to throw up.
Worst of all is that a friend of mine, knowing about my opera passion, gave me as a birthday gift a DVD of one of the recitals of "opera singer":rolleyes: Andrea Bocelli. I had to control my facial expression to be able to say "how thoughtful, oh wow, great, thank you so much!":p
 
#6 ·
Bochornelli?

I gladly would hire him in order to clean up my house...I don't remember...I think he's blind...Isn't he?...oh...I have forgotten it. Does he cook well, at least? Some pasta?

Martin, curious.

P.S. Bochorno is a Spanish word for shame or something like that.
 
#8 ·
Bad, bad choice - not that the blue-rinse brigade will care all that much.
 
#14 ·
I actually made it to 1:12 :eek::lol: But it was more out of curiosity and fascination. (I'm one of those who love to watch American Idol and such shows to have a laugh about contestants who can't sing) I can stand to hear people sing badly but I had to give up after the first few high Cs.
I had little respect for Bocelli to start with but when I read that he made the choice to do crossover because he was "lazy" I had no respect left. sorry.
 
#18 ·
I was discussing this aria via email with my mom, who is a very casual opera fan (i.e., owns no recordings and likely would never go to an opera on her own, but will happily attend if someone wants her to go with them and knows the names of several current singers), and she had kind of a similar reaction

My email:
Just an interesting comparison
JDF singing the same portion of the aria (last portion, only a couple minutes in length) in a similar setting as the Bocelli link below (as always, choose the highest quality possible at the bottom right of the video):


And Bocelli:


Were you able to make it all the way through?


Her reply

Listened to JDF first and then AB. JDF obviously better, but not striking. Then I immediately replayed JDF again and it was astoundingly better. Like listening to Pavarotti after Paul Potts....

See if you don't have the same reaction listening to them in that order. I chose those two links as they are the most similar in presentation (just the Pour Mon Ame portion, and in a concert setting with only a piano as accompaniment).
 
#22 ·
OK, I found something very interesting on YouTube: David Gilmour (former Pink Floyd) singing Je crois entendre encore. To tell you the truth, I liked it a lot. He is not an operatic singer, obviously, but I think his rendition was interesting and well arranged.

 
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#33 ·
I've just played again the Gilmour clip... I really like it. I wonder what the surely opera-naïve audience thought of it. Probably they found it to be very beautiful (and it is) and would be surprised to know that it comes from an opera.
 
#48 ·
That's the problem with Pink Floyd post Waters: Gilmour's a beautiful musician, but he's playing rock, not classical music. Waters was the one who added the grit to Pink Floyd that made them much more emotionally powerful than many of their overpolished prog rock peers of the 70's. Without him they are just yet another boring guitar/keyboard mashing setup. Waters wasn't wrong to say that Pink Floyd was a spent force when he left them, but so too was Genesis, Yes and all of their peers. Their era was over already, and it took the new generation of prog rock artists (Porcupine Tree, Riverside, Spock's Beard etc) to revive the genre.
 
#34 ·
I think that Gilmour "saved" Pink Floyd name by spliting with Waters. Don't know how you may feel about Waters' albums after Pink Floyd, but I see them as something completely out of track with "Floyd tradition". For example, I would say that A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell are more "floydian" than The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Radio KAOS or Amused to Death, which seem to be kind of a therapy for Waters and his childhood problems, absence of his father and pressing influence of mother. Even last PF albums were under the this spell; but while The Wall had it packaged as real art, in Final Cut it was already too obvious.

What I am trying to say is that even if we say that all art comes from "neurosis", it can still be presented in more or less artistic way - it is one thing to make an album, or an opera, or even a novel which is product of neurosis, but has some kind of universal value that one can relate to, but completely another to sit down and write autobiography of one's problems. I can relate to his song Mother on album The Wall, but not to songs from his later albums.

Although I do admit that non-Waters PF albums lack "concept".

Please understand that English is not my native language so I couldn't express my self fully, so while I'd like a response, I wouldn't like to see someone clinging to every word I wrote - I couldn't be more precise than I was.
 
#35 ·
Your English seems just fine to me. You said it beautifully.
Yes, I grew tired of Waters' endless repetition of this take - although I think The Wall makes more reference to Barret's problems, doesn't it? I don't know very well, I love their music but I'm not an expert in their biography.
 
#46 ·
OK, to put things in perspective - and to put poor David Gilmour on his place (although I do like him a lot) - let's listen to the same aria with Placido Domingo:

 
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