Fine-art Friday flashback: Pavarotti sick, Aretha kills it.
I remember watching this live. I’m not ashamed to say that it made me cry. Pavarotti called in sick for the performance that was to accompany his lifetime achievement award. Needless to say, the orchestra had already been ordered up. The choir. The arrangements were locked. Word went out among the world’s greatest musicians: who would be willing to stand in for Luciano. And sing in his key. In Italian. A year earlier, she had quietly enrolled and been accepted for study at the Julliard School in New York to study classical piano. While it is not known how much of that study included multilingual arias, this much is clear. She destroys the track.
The only sad part is that this clip doesn’t show the before and after shots of a bewildered Sting, who introduced Aretha bracing the audience for a “best effort” under bad circumstances. Afterward, he wore the stunned expression of someone who had suddenly realized the profoundity of his own musical shortcomings. But it wasn’t his fault. As onetime Mick Jagger paramour Marianne Faithfull remarked: “The voice of God, if you must know, is Aretha Franklin’s.”
Turman
That was awesome.
She DID nail it.
I’d pay to see the look on Stings face.
The short shot of the crowd response is still pretty classic.
FINE Art Friday
Comment by cocomotion | 07.26.2008 | 2:28 am
Oh, ReRe. The goosebumps. The memories. What I love about this performance is her make-it-mine-all-mine attitude: some parts she sings in English (goddamn right.); some parts she sings in Italian; but mostly she has the juice to sing opera in the Detroit style - hanging slightly behind the beat… the beat of a hundred piece orchestra! Oh, ReRe. Detroit is proud of you.
Comment by bjackson | 07.29.2008 | 6:41 pm