I don't know if that's Corelli singing Montiverdi like Puccini so much as Corelli singing Montiverdi like a Corelli who's not in good voice would sing it. To be honest, I think that I would still rather see that than the evil deeds most people can end up committing upon Ombra mai fu.
I just CANNOT imagine what your database consists of!! Am routinely impressed by your rep knowledge, but tend to shrug it off with an "oh yeah, wide knowledge, database guru, cool". But this?? Srsly, what were you filing these things under so that you could bring them up like that??
Shouldn't probably admit it but I liked the Celine Dion. Don't think I've actually ever listened to anything of hers before, but at least she admitted she was no opera singer and fancied singing it anyway. Unlike the "rock soprano" eeeeeuw.
LaTosca
"You don't need C major to find eternity." (Pierre Boulez being a tiny bit bitchy about Messiaen)
She's the Canadianne everyone loves to hate. And while she did some pretty heinous stuff in the last few albums, her early work is pretty good. Especially her earliest French albums.
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*I am not a doctor, and any opinions I express on this forum are my opinions only, and should not be confused with real medical advice given by a licensed professional. If you are concerned about your medical condition, always see a doctor!
OK, so she was not well-advised on this one. I don't have strong feelings about Jewel one way or the other, but I give her points for trying, especially a capella (eek), and perhaps she could find another piece that isn't quite so hard to pull off.
On the other hand, I have to protest the "epic fail" comments here and on YouTube. I understand that opera is a blood sport, but if we demand that only a set of pre-approved highly trained singers perform "our" music, the music will never be heard by the vast majority of people. No, she's not a classically trained singer. No, she doesn't have the breath or pitch control to pull this off. But I really don't think that we do ourselves any favors when we pile the hatred on people who haven't passed through the sacred portals of bel canto.
Totally absurd. What she's singing is not "our" music. It's a cheap and mascaraed imitation. Same goes for when Streisand tries to sing it, when Rufus tries to sing it, when even Kathryn Jenkins tries to sing it.
It's classical music. It's meant to be sung by classically trained singers. It isn't going to die if Jewel doesn't sing it or if pop stars don't sing it. All this talk about the death of a 400 year old art form that has survived countless evolutions, the Beatles, Elvis, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Jewel is absurd. No one is going to go to the opera because they heard Jewel sing the song. If they do, they're going to be disappointed and will probably never come back.
You keep the art form alive by performing it and performing it well. Not by beating it up and putting it in a different genre.
like all these Jewel fans are going to come to nfcs, read this, and be so horribly offended that they'll never go hear opera EVER. (as if they were going to anyway)
LOL
Srsly
Fans of every genre feel the same way. I know people who hate hearing classic Broadway sung in a pop style. And my sister who is really into the blues can go on forever about pop artists butchering the art form. You think we're bad? Go check out the websites for any musical genre that isn't top 40.
Houndentenor
"Get the trash off the street and back on the stage where it belongs." -- Bette Midler
Heh, Renee Fleming's attempts at jazz and Kiri Te Kanawa's take on Cole Porter reinforce HT's point. Domingo's duets w/John Denver aren't exactly going down in history.
And I agree that Jewel's attempt will probably not make someone decide to go to the opera. Look at all of the non-trained voices out there doing "Nessun dorma," and the best that we can say is that they encourage other non-trained voices to try it out. And butcher it. And, indeed, there are substantial grounds for banning that aria entirely from "XXXX's Got Talent" competitions. Personally, I'd be happy not to hear it again for several years.
I'm saying that we are not serving the music well if we say that only the chosen few are allowed to perform it and build a fence around it. We don't need to protect it: the music does a pretty good job of making people look foolish. It makes trained singers look stupid on a regular basis.
Didn't Renee get her start as a jazz singer, though? I know that her 'Sacred Heart' album (whatever the name) was truly awful because I listened to bits of it, but it was my understanding that she was a jazz vocalist before/while she was still receiving her training in classical music.
She did sing some jazz in a club while she was in school. It was hardly the launching pad to her opera career. Her PR people have tried to play that up but it's a little ridiculous if you ask me.
Houndentenor
"Get the trash off the street and back on the stage where it belongs." -- Bette Midler
Seriously....perhaps love is one of my favorite songs. Denver had a really unique voice. I Like the pop/classical duets better than the ones that are around today.
I'm a terrible basketball player. I like to play basketball. I do my best, and I'm still awful. Nobody's telling me I can't go out and play basketball. But, if I plan to make a video of me playing basketball, and post it on YouTube, then, yeah, people are going to tell me what an awful basketball player I am. Just because I tried doesn't make the outcome any less awful. Jewel is a singer. Jewel likes to sing. Jewel apparently likes to sing Monteverdi. Big props to Jewel for attempting to sing something she apparently likes. The outcome of Jewel's attempt is awful. Nobody is telling Jewel she can't sing Monteverdi. However, do you really think that performances like this are going to somehow advance your art form? Really?
Nope, I wouldn't tell you that. But I'm also not going to tell you that you aren't allowed to play basketball if you like it. You aren't selling yourself as an NBA player and no one is likely to put you in a professional game. No one is likely to try to copy your moves.
Nobody is saying Jewel CAN'T sing this stuff if she likes. Rather, most people are agreeing that she probably SHOULDN'T sing it, and the inference that poo-pooing Jewel's performance is tantamount to tarnishing the future of opera is silly at best. We should also be thinking about the composer's intentions here. I'm pretty sure he didn't have Jewel in mind....
Okay, some of the comments are very funny. The top one, just now at least, was chastising people and saying it wasn't any worse than an undergrad soprano. Which is sort of true (depends on the undergrad and the school, clearly!), but the difference is that said mythical undergrad isn't raking in piles of money for having bastardised Monteverdi in public.
There is a reason why we train. You can say what you want about pop requiring just as much training as classical singing, but the pop industry doesn't require it of its singers. Pop requires pretty faces and (more importantly) good bodies, and a voice passable enough to be electronically modified into something worth listening to. I like Jewel's music. I'm not saying I think she (or any other pop singer, for that matter) is wholly lacking in talent. (I take that back: Ashlee Simpson.) I'm just saying that what we do takes training in phonation and a certain level of stylistic knowledge, both of which are notably lacking in this. It makes me so angry when people like Michael Bolton come up in google searches for "opera singer". Maybe there's a place for poppier renditions of classical music (though I'm not going to buy those recordings), but what bothers me is that, quite likely, the ilk of performer singing this kind of aria this way doesn't know what they're even doing it wrong in the first place. And if they're that ignorant, I want them to stay away from our repertoire.
Ooh, I'm ranting. Time to end comment, lol.
This message has been edited by kleinod.mein on Jul 2, 2009 2:52 PM
I was expecting the worst thing in the world here. It's pretty bad but really, I've heard MUCH worse from undergrads who think they're going to have major careers!!!
Those undergrads are young, and at the beginning of their training. There's a good chance that many of them will improve enough to get to the next level of the career, where they will continue to receive training and (ideally) continue to improve. They're also not making tons of money at this. They usually know that they're beginners, no matter what their delusions of eventual grandeur, and they have people who will tell them when they're doing it wrong. Who is coaching Jewel???
In all fairness, I don't think Jewel has any delusions of operatic grandeur. She's just having some fun with something, even if to us it sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Those undergrad chicks that think they're unbelievable when they really don't sound much better than this ARE trying to be singers. Still, what does it say when some forty something pop singer with little to no classical training can shit out the same level of singing as a 22 year old whose entire four years of college have been spent trying to produce a beautiful sound?!?
What I'm saying is, points for trying to do it right, no matter what the final result. Not even doing a little basic research to find out what the style is supposed to be? Fail on performance practise. Making money off it, even if it's just someone "having some fun with something", is not cool in my books.
I also don't know which undergrads you've been hearing, but really? 22-year-olds? Not at the schools I've been to. Edit: 18-&19-year-olds, maybe, but not the upper year performance majors.
This message has been edited by kleinod.mein on Jul 3, 2009 6:23 PM
The first few bars are really awful. It gets better after that. This isn't how I want this sung but it's better than most pop singers could do with something like this.
Seriously, next time with accompaniment!
Houndentenor
"Get the trash off the street and back on the stage where it belongs." -- Bette Midler
Her vocal production isn't bad at all. If she had accompaniment, her intonation probably would have been a lot better. Okay, so she does some things that are stylistically "wrong," but I can deal with that. It's better than some of the other popera I've heard!
You know, it's a pretty little voice and this not terrible. She sounds like a freshman or sophomore undergrad soprano. No breath or line, no vibrato, poor intonation in places, not terribly musical, but it's not any worse than any other undergrad soprano. What I wonder is why she wants to do this music. I wonder if she has a vocal coach who has her doing this stuff as an exercise? I think if she trained the voice more she might be able to sing this music respectably.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
I've often heard that she's a "trained opera singer,"
July 6 2009, 11:57 PM
which really means that she at one point was enrolled in music school. Can't remember when or how long, although it seems pretty apparent from the clips.
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"It's like they say, there's no damn business like show business. You had to smile to keep from throwing up." -Billie Holiday
She spent her junior and senior years of high school at Interlochen. She DID study classical voice there, so she's not a TOTAL n00b. Apparently the Interlochen Arts Academy High School has an opera workshop, so it's quite possible she was in that while she was there. A lot of bios about her say she "briefly considered a career in opera", but she moved back to Alaska and started songwriting instead. Seems to have worked out rather well for her.
I love her! I used to listen to her all the time in 98' and still love her songs. Give her a break, she's from Alaska and lived in a van for cryin out loud. She obviously likes classical music, so let her sing in if she wants too, maybe it will even draw in some new classical music fans. It's a pretty brave thing for a folk singer to try out classical rep. Go Jewel!
I used to love her songs back in the day, too. Why is it asking too much to ask already-famous singers to have enough respect for this version of the art form to hire a coach and do it properly? That's all I'm asking, personally. I don't mean to sound like a bitch about it, but come on. There are reasons that we spend all this time and money learning style. I'm not even criticising her voice; I'm upset that the style is so wrong.
She may be a poor girl who lived in a van. But all the cockle-warming backstory in the world is meaningless if girlfriend can't sing in tune! I personally don't have any problems with Jewel singing any damn thing she wants, but if you can't do a piece justice, don't take it on the road.
Being brave and being competent are two very different things. What's wrong with having standards, and asking for competence in performers?
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*I am not a doctor, and any opinions I express on this forum are my opinions only, and should not be confused with real medical advice given by a licensed professional. If you are concerned about your medical condition, always see a doctor!
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