Following the success of their Central Park reunion show, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel embarked on a world tour in 1982 and ’83. Riding the high of those performances, the duo headed back into the studio to record their first album together in 13 years.
The record had a working title of ‘Think Too Much,’ named after a pair of songs in its track list.
I’m wrapping up my week of opera arias with my very favorite — ‘Che gelida manina’ from Puccini’s La Boheme. As I mentioned on Monday, La Boheme is the one opera I’ve seen in its entirety (Baz Luhrmann’s version on Broadway).
This is among the best-known, best-loved and most referenced operas of all-time (it was the inspiration for Rent and features prominently in Moonstruck — remember Cher’s memorable line, “I didn’t think she was gonna die. I knew she was sick… I mean, she was coughing her brains out, and still she had to keep singing!”?).
I apologize to those who might find fault with my choice of Luciano Pavarotti as the singer of most of the arias I’m featuring this week. As I posted yesterday, my introduction to these songs came from a Pavarotti CD my parents owned, and therefore I will always make that association.
Based on comments I’ve read around the Web, some people are decidedly anti-Pavarotti, dismissing him as overrated because he’s one of the few opera singers who enjoyed a measure of crossover popularity.
Almost all of my opera knowledge comes from a Pavarotti album my parents owned when I was a kid — The World’s Favourite Tenor Arias (pictured at right).
We would listen to this album while shooting pool in the finished basement of our northern Virginia house. And while I expect most teenagers would cringe at the idea of having to both hang out with their parents AND listen to opera, I loved doing both.
Next up in Opera Week is perhaps the most celebrated aria in history, and certainly one of my very favorites.
Leoncavallo’s ‘Vesti La Giubba’ wraps up the first act of Pagliacci, a tragic tale of a clown and his unfaithful wife. In this aria, lead character Canio discovers his wife’s infidelity but must go on with the show. Sometimes the English translations of great arias are kind of silly — is she really singing with such passion about a trade agreement? But in this case, the English translation reads as powerful and poignant as the Italian sounds.
