Customer Reviews

My Secret Passion

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

First, I feel I need to establish my own classical and operatic cred. I began studying classical piano when I was ten; I'm currently 43. I come from an opera-mad Italian family whose members could sing "La Traviata" and "Rigoletto" -- including the quartet -- from memory over the dinner table. I consider no home complete without a copy of the Victor book, which my dad knew like most preachers know the Bible. This music is my vernacular, and for most other operatic snobs who feel the need to denigrate modern voices like Bolton's, I assure you, I can bury you with knowledge of the fine details.

However, like I said, I'm also 43. I came of age during the glory days of the high tenor in rock and pop, the early 80s, and the best of them are outright magnificent by any reasonable standard. Are they what I would call operatic voices? Of course not. Neither is Streisand. There's more than one way to sing, you know. These voices aren't worse, simply different. They color the notes more; in modern singing, each note has more structure inside of it compared to classical voice, which prizes uniformity of color within the individual notes and within a singer's range. (I wonder how many snobs who feel that Bolton had no business singing these pieces would have reacted to Maria Callas's changes in color and florid interps if they hadn't been told by their own snobbery that they were supposed to like her.)

That said, I'm familiar with Bolton's voice only from having grown up in the 80s. The most I could say prior to this CD is that I liked his old interp of Redding's "Dock of the Bay" and found it more extravagant than Redding's own more resigned take. I like his voice, but am not terribly familiar with it and am not what you would call a fan. And his take on these arias is beautiful and charming. Come on. After a while, any opera fan gets sick and tired of hearing a dozen beautiful voices desperately trying to imitate the same two singers and singing the same damned cadenzas over and over. How many times do you need to hear Caruso's cadenzas, people? These pieces are meant to bleed and sweat, not be listened to as auditory valium, with no surprises and sung the same damned way over and over ad nauseum.

Bolton's different technique and style of singing adds an immediacy and unpredictability to these beautiful arias that they badly need. Instead of sitting back and being lulled into a familiar contentment with them, one is forced to sit forward and pay attention, unsure of what's going to come next. It's preposterous to listen to this and expect him to suddenly sing with an operatic technique -- he has a complete, coherent technique of his own, and for anyone who wants to sit static and listen to yet one more passable voice try to imitate Caruso, well, there are dozens of ordinary young tenors you can pick from, all of them desperately trying to sound exactly like one another. I'll let you in on a secret -- most lay listeners can't even tell them apart from one another.

So, if you want to finally get these arias dragged into the twentieth or twenty-first century, and moreover be pleasantly surprised at how well they translate into the modern era with a gifted nonoperatic voice, then this is the CD for you. It's not for the stodgy, and it's not for people who treat classical music like a security blanket or a pacifier.

I'm not saying I don't like the more typical interps. In my family, Pavarotti and Sills were deities, and I still consider them so. But these pieces and the operas they're from aren't meant to be sucked on to put you to sleep. For God's sake, "Aida" has someone being buried alive, and "Tosca" ends with a freaking suicide! They are beautiful music meant to shake you down a bit, and they have here been interpreted by a very gifted singer. This CD features a good voice and good music ... what the hell is there to complain about? I really do not understand some people. If you love opera, why in God's name would you complain to hear an admittedly gifted singer have a whack at it? Has Bolton replaced Luciano, Placido, and Beniamino? No -- but then if you think he was trying to, you're missing the point.

How can you claim that you love a certain form of music and yet want as few people to attempt it as possible? Mark me down as someone who was delighted and transported by Domingo in the LA Opera's "Tamerlano" this past November, who cranks up her Pavarotti, Southerland, and Sills and who also finds this CD absolutely lovely and a delight from start to finish. Bolton's voice is clear, clean, powerful, accurate, and precise, and he has a marvelous range of particular interest to me. (I like all good, clean extremely high male voices like him, Scholl, Maniaci, Oberlin, Daniels ... and Perry, Mercury, Wilson, Somerville, and DeYoung. Unlike many music snobs, if it sounds good, I'll listen, and I respect NO boundaries between any forms of music.)

Some people listen to music not because they love it, but because it marks their tribal membership to others around them. They only recognize something as Great Art if it's hanging in a gallery, and they will promptly be transported by the subtle and demure undertones in a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck if you remove the label and tell them it cost $80 and comes from France. If you are one of those kinds of people and you like your musical boundaries untransgressed, give this CD a pass. If you simply like what's good and want to hear a gifted (nonoperatic) singer do a lovely job with beautiful music, then you'll probably find this CD charming, surprising, and well worth the money. About the only thing I would have changed in it is I would have liked to hear him have a bash at some Baroque stuff (might have been a bit too high for even him though, although he may have been able to manage some of the ones written for Senesino's lower register), and I would have liked a slightly less "lush" accompaniment. It sounded a bit too legato and syrupy. Something more subtle and understated would have fitted his voice a bit better, I think.

Sorry, but I can't go along with all these hard-core opera fans who are sniffing down their noses at this CD. I give Michael Bolton full credit for making the stretch to another recording genre, if only to share this music with a new audience. I don't know much about his pop music, but I found this CD to be powerful and lovely.

I particularly enjoyed "Nessun dorma," "Una furtiva lagrima," and "O soave fanciulla." So what if Renee Fleming sings rings around Michael? They still sound lovely together.

Obviously he can't match up to a Pavarotti or a Domingo, but that's not the point here. Personally, I love it when an artist has the courage to experiment a little and try things outside the genre he or she has been boxed into.

Now if only we could get a female pop star, say Celine Dion or Barbra Streisand, to record an album of arias. And if they do, more power to them, opera fans, because they'll be introducing thousands of people to the beauty of this wonderful music.

What separates pop singing from classically trained, "operatic" singing? The microphone.

Obviously, for most of the history of Western music, there were no microphones. With no microphone, a singer has to make his voice into an acoustic instrument if anyone's going to hear what he's singing (especially if an orchestra is playing at the same time). He has to be able to resonate and project his voice the same way a trumpet or a violin resonates and projects -- and it takes years to develop that ability, it's truly a rarefied skill. That's why operatic singing comes across as such a caricature to people who are unfamiliar with it: classically trained singers make their voices into acoustic instruments that have much more in common with trumpets and violins than with the speaking voice. It's a use of the vocal mechanism that transforms it into something very different than what we're used to hearing when people talk.

Pop singing, then, by contrast, is based in the speaking voice and not in acoustically resonant tone production. That's its appeal: the microphone allows for a kind of singing that's basically the same as what we're used to hearing when people talk. It's familiar to everyone, it's accessible. It's "popular," because for vast majority of people, uninitiated and illiterate, so to speak, when it comes to trained singing, pop singing seems to express something of ordinary people rather than of some strange world of elitist, snobbish "art" music. Even in the case of the big-voiced "belters" in the pop singing world, then, such as Michael Bolton or Celine Dion, we're still dealing, essentially, with speaking (or shouting) on pitch, and not with singing in the trained, classical sense.

This isn't to say that pop singing is a bad thing: it's not, it's a good thing. Nor is it to say that there isn't real artistry in microphone-dependent pop singing: there is, to be sure. It's only to say that pop singing is apples to operatic singing's oranges. All of this is an attempt to explain why a belter like Michael Bolton singing opera arias is just as ridiculous as an opera singer rapping, or a rock band playing oboes and bassoons instead of electric guitars and basses. The pop singer's voice is an utterly different instrument than the operatic voice, and it has no more place in Verdi or Puccini than the Wagnerian "fat lady" has at the Country Music Awards.

So it's highly amusing to hear the idiosyncrasies of Bolton's singing brought to bear on these opera arias. Expressive effects that are effective in his pop songs are pretty silly in this context. Do Bolton fans actually like hearing this album? I wonder... I love Gregg Allman's singing, and Lyle Lovett's, and Chris Isaak's, but that doesn't mean I could stand to listen to them breach a musical atrocity such as this one.

When I first laid eyes on this album, my first reaction was, "You've GOT to be kidding me!! Michael Bolton? Opera? My God, what will they think of next, Celine Dion destroying the greatest soprano opera arias?" Well, I finally had enough gumption to pull this album off the shelf of the library and take a listen to it, and it frankly surprised me. While Bolton is no Bocelli, he certainly has at least some potential to be a half-way reasonable opera singer. He needs a lot of polish to smooth off the raspy vocal quality heard in his pop music, but still, there is definite potential here if he wants to develop his instrument. He'll never grace the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, to be sure, but I wouldn't mind hearing him try more of this venue once he's polished his voice a bit more, if that is what he intends to do.
As a dyed-in-the-wool opera fan, I cannot give this album a full five stars, as there are a number of flaws in Bolton's delivery of some of the beloved tenor arias, but I give the man high marks for trying and for at least having the courage to try a classical album. It takes a lot of guts to do the cross-over thing when you are an artist established in a particular venue, but one benefit of this is that maybe Bolton fans who had not previously been exposed to opera might now consider buying this album and taking a good serious listen to it and maybe learning to love the operatic repertoire. I hope he continues in this pursuit of the operatic venue and studies more voice technique so that we might hear it once it has been better refined. After all, this is just his first attempt at operatic repertoire. May it not be his last.

Good playing on the part of the Philharmonia. Bolton's instrument (voice) is simply not geared for opera.

He hits the notes (mostly), but there's a hell of a lot more to this music than just hitting the notes. Bolton is certainly passionate enough, and I believe the title of the album is genuinely the way he feels about this music, but this performance is just too unrefined, it isn't well-coached or wrought in any way. It's raspy, badly mic'd, and unclear: a blunt-force-trauma approach to operatic singing.

I enjoy hearing Michael Bolton soaring to heights that those snooty opera snobs only wish they could go. He does have a very characteristic voice
but that's what makes life so grand, variety. I get tired of listening to any artist for extended periods of time, don't you? He's very talented.

I have sung in church all my life and am a high soprano. I love it. That's probably the draw. I, as most, have never studied opera, so I don't hear the flaws, I just enjoy the music. The orchestration is awesome.

Michael has shown unusual talent and courage in being able to switch from pop music to opera when he wants. Hmm, when did I ever hear of that happening last? I don't know a lot about him personally, but I like his music.

As for you critics, why don't you try something new in your life, it's fun!
Don't worry, no one will criticize you.

Priscilla in Westland

It's probably relevant to mention that I'm studying opera, before I begin this review. Now I'm probably one of more critical opera goers as well as popular music lovers out there. He's not trying to be some opera star. You could just tell that he LOVVVES these arias. Furthermore, these are not easy "walk-in-the-park" arias. They have difficult rhythms and high notes that would give Pavarotti chills! Bolton nails all of these aspects very well! Not a single rhythm has not been studied and rehearsed thoroughly and not a single high A, B, or C was under pitch. I can't name a pop tenor who could even do this! To have the courage and the gumption to release something like this, is by itself a feat! I would have no problems complaining if his diction was inaccurate, high notes were unsupported, rhythms were sloppy, etc. But there's nothing to complain about. When I popped the cd in, I was totally anticipating the worst and was happily wrong. I'm not even a Michael Bolton fan and I can really appreciate this. I don't intend to refer to this CD for my vocal technique, put if I'm looking for interesting and original inflection or passionate phrases, guess where I'm turning to! To have used the precious time he could have used to record another pop album, to coach with Caballé, Domingo, Pavarotti and employ the services of a language diction coach, Danielle Orlando (it says all this in back of the CD insert booklet), is certainly an act to be praised! No one is trying to convince anyone that Michael Bolton is trying to be an opera singer. For what this is, a known pop singer singing his favorite selections from opera, no one could do better! We shouldn't be comparing his singing to opera greats, because he's not trying to be one! He obviously has a passion to share his love of opera with his fans and the world. I admire him greatly for his courage and artistry.

For what it is, I glady give it 5 stars!!

I feel very good about Michael Bolton's intentions in making this CD, and think it's a successful introduction to opera suitable for those fans of his who ordinarily wouldn't listen to opera.

I am suprprise that nobody has mentioned the notes which are a great guide to those unfamiliar with opera. The dramatic background of each aria is given, with suitable illustrations, as well as the original lyrics & English translations.

As opera, I can't give it any more than three stars, but as a serious, sincere effort to introduce the genre to his fans, I sure can't give it any less than three either.

I urge Michael Bolton's fans to give this a try. It may take several times to become acclimated to this, but it's worth it. It is of course of much less interest to opera purists, although some may find it quite worthwhile as a curiosity, as an example of a pop singer seriously applying himself to these arias.

I am appalled I cannot rate this lower than 1 star. For those fans of Michael Bolton's they should be ashamed of their pop star of choice. I do not care how well he sings pop music. He should not be singing anything close to classical music, much less so opera. There is a reason why he is so passionate about it, and that is because this is a higher form of art only achieved through hard work and 100% dedication. I am sure he has tried to sound as legit as possible but he just cannot be taken seriously. His diction is terrible, his phrasing a joke, his musicality missing, and his tuning all over the place. He does not understand imposted singing and is not capable of any sort of legato.
All that said, it is not Bolton's fault that this disc exists. It is ultimately the market's. If he wants to release his farts in the bathroom it is up to him. The fans are the ones who buy them.
Last but not least a zero for Ms. Fleming, who is seeing her own career wander in the last few years, with no direction in repertory and with lack a of artistic consistency. Now she is taking on ventures such as this where she can only be the accomplice of a big fat joke played on hers and Bolton's fans. Renee, do you expect that any of your real fans will actually acquire this? Pray they do not.

I have never been an opera fan at all and I'm not a huge Michael Bolton fan; but my wife likes his pop albums and I've gone to a concert or two with her so I was curious when I saw this one. I think a previous reviewer suggested that this album might convince people who would have no interest in opera to give it a try and that's basically what it did for me. Bolton holds his own surprisingly well on some difficult arias (at least they sounded difficult to me) but what really sold me was the liner notes. Each piece has the background leading up to it and the english translation. I know opera snots say you don't need to know the translation but it helped me to appreciate the songs a bit more. That coupled with Bolton's surprisingly good vocals made this CD a worthwhile purchase and my favorite Michael Bolton CD.