Firsts

I was trying to remember my first live concerts today. As I grow older, I find my memories more and more precious. Friends with whom I grew up seem to be dying off at an accelerated rate, and it occurred to me these friends are guardians of entire periods of my life. When they die, they take part of me with them. These friends remember things about me I've forgotten. I know I've recalled incidents they've forgotten. Maybe this isn't important. The past is the past for a reason. Maybe we should leave it alone.

Yet I do remember my first live Classical concerts. My first real girlfriend in High School played trombone in the Knoxville Youth Symphony. How cool was that? So I got to sit in on many rehearsals and got comped to all the concerts. She played the trombone solo in Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival Overture, which happens to be the longest trombone solo in the genre of Classical music. Not only that, but the band director of our High School played in the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. My girlfriend was in the band, so I got to be a hanger-on by way of her. I went to the Knoxville Symphony Concert the night of my prom. I recall the program included The Swan from Saint- Saen's Carnival of the Animals and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

The first live opera I attended was Verdi's Aida, presented by the Knoxville Opera company. This was followed in years to come by The Magic Flute, Turandot, and Gounod's Damnation of Faust. In the early 1980's, I saw Luciano Pavarotti live at Thompson-Bowling Arena (which is the basketball arena in Knoxville). They sold popcorn. At the end of this magnificent performance, Maestro Pavarotti said, "Never have I performed before such a wonderful audience, in such a wonderful place, and with such a wonderful smell of popcorn." An audience member handed him a bag, and he waved his handkerchief at us.

I will tell you I don't understand critics. I attend opera events and sometime read very negative reviews of what I thought were--to me--transcendental performances. Now granted, I am a layman. But I've been listening to music since I was a kid. I can tell the difference between Andrea Bocelli--a decent but not operatic quality singer, which seems to baffle people who, upon hearing I love opera, seem to assume I must like Bocelli ( I don't)--and Pavarotti.

Well dang it, let me digress: I'm not criticizing Mr. Bocelli, who has carved out an excellent career for himself, and who has a very sweet, warm voice. But his voice is not operatic quality. There are videos of him singing with Pavarotti and you can clearly hear the difference. Although there are people (not opera fans) who tell me they can't tell the difference in the two singer's "style." Fair enough--not everyone is a born fop, and it takes time to cultivate an ear for opera. and let's face it--modern popular music is just so bad, many people can't distinguish between a good singer and the sound a rusty pipe makes in the middle of the night.

Recently there has been a phenomenon of the public embracing singers such as Susan Boyle and Paul Potts, two admittedly talented singers discovered on Britian's Got Talent. Susan is a good singer, and Paul Potts a slightly better singer, but there are much better singers out there dying for a break. What intrigues us about Susan and Paul isn't their voices, but their stories. These are two, plain, ordinary, working -class people who rose above their ordinary lives and boring jobs and with a little talent and by following their dreams, became stars. You see, they could be us. Through them, those of us who sing to our loofahs in the shower imagine that with a little nudge in the right direction, we too, could land a major record deal.

But one-in-a-million-voices? No way. I personally know people who sing much better than either one of them. It was the Story that grabbed us. Emotional content over Star Quality.

Back to the critics though. I would go to these operas, often featuring very famous performers, return home enraptured, then read the critic's reviews (or now, thanks to Youtube, people I never heard of bloviating that the Met has once again eviscerated Verdi). And I have to wonder to what stellar performance these pundits are comparing the performance I just attended.

I think it might be something like this: I'm a professional entertainer myself. There are in my business a plethora of resentful non-professionals who, for some reason, consider themselves better than every hard-working professional who ever lived. You see them posting on various on-line fora after every David Blaine or Copperfield special: "Oh my double-fingered muckety-move is so much better than his--I should be on television," or "He has no personality--I'm so much more entertaining. How did that guy get on television?" I suspect a lot of these opera critics may be frustrated musicians or failed singers venting their ire that the world likewise never recognized their genius.

I made a rule long ago. Don't listen to critics--listen to the music. Let your ear and your heart tell you what's good.

On another note, used bookstores can be a goldmine of used music DVDs. I picked up a couple of great ones on my last trip to Knoxville at Edward Mckay's. One was a concert tape of Roberto Alagna, who recently played a sensational Don Jose opposite in the Met's production of Bizet's Carmen. I found a clip from this concert and Robert has no problem flaunting his unabashed foppishness, as you can see: