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Caroline
17 years ago

Nay, One will Sing. Thanks Ken. Lovely.

Joshua Gans
17 years ago

Greatest tenor ever? I’m not sure, but here’s some comparisons with the competition:

Pavarotti v. Jussi Bjorling v. Enrico Caruso

Pavarotti v. Jose Carreras v. Joseph Schmidt

Pavarotti v. Placido Domingo v. Beniamino Gigli

Rob
Rob
17 years ago

Bjorling, de Stefano and Lauritz Melchior were the best ever. After Caruso, of course.

Joshua Gans
17 years ago

I had di Stefano in there, but removed him symmetry’s sake. Melchior is a Wagnerian — a different kind of animal. And I like Domingo a lot, actually. You are prejudiced because of Keating.

Robert
Robert
17 years ago

Given they reached in and grabbed you all: pretty much all of them – and that the word ‘grabbed’ works only in music, for it is felt, known there, as hungry needed encompassing soulfulness and can’t be read nor conceived in text nor other visual form for the commandment of it…

– Bjorling speaks of the accuracy to that aim, with an unexpected joyful allowance to humour as it does so (as though there is an edge, and we, listening, may cross one way or t’other); it is a working person’s humanity, and when he goes big or deep, it is to reinforce that common humanity, and the natural depths of that we feel;

– Caruso cares less for accuracy of that sort, and wants our emotions, to send messages that he wants them so, and, taking them, moves them, and lifts them, that our here-and-now feelings be the all, and to linger oh so necessarily; he holds us for tender thought as well, born of a world wherein a glimpse of the sublime is enough, should be enough, to pull us through;

– Domingo wants to smash down our barriers to anything else; he seems to want us to feel neither feminine nor masculine, and yet each, in his quest to give us bigness; and he wants to cry for us, to hold, shoulder and speak of that pain and that grandness, for he knows the world has moved on in so many ways, that we ask of it – and that recordings can nowadays give it. The journey in song remains, the aforesaid soulfulness not only remains but is given breath as we as partakers share in developing ways of expressing ourselves so that the voice, that ventricle to and of our depths and our flowing dailyness can be heard in majesty – as we see and feel fit – from the modern day creative, songful, source. He is supremely gifted, and yet flies aloft on the wings of the modern age.

– Pavarotti felt for all these things, I believe. What could he do? Knowing he was gifted, and that times had changed, and that his instrumental power was born of those that had gone before, he sang, and sang to us all – that all of the above could be melded somehow, including that there would be deficits for doing so, but those deficits were of no power to the cause. He knew bigness, which he loved and loved to share, and he knew male and female – sensitivities that is- and he knew the gallery, and he knew humour. He could hold all of that together as he sang, and your days and years would dissolve there and then as much as he gave it – and you knew he was doing so or not. If we were left with a question, after him taking us through that, it would be only a good question.

Obviously Pavarotti knew and gave much more than these words thrown down, and that comparisons are made and enjoyed, on the trail edge of it. In the end, the heart comes through.

harry clarke
17 years ago

I have spent the morning youtubing Luciano. One of my favourite clips is Luciano with Joan Sutherland at the Sydney Opera House. Wonderful:

Caroline
17 years ago

Thanks Harry. The Dame sure can sing, but its always been impossible to understand what she’s singing about. Her diction is not good, but her notes are faultless, almost scary in their strength and intensity. She’s a wee bit competitive too, I note. But I suppose with voice like that . . .

The Dame’s big, but Pavarotti–bigger. No sign of him running a higher, longer, louder competition in this clip.