i know the horse is dead but...obviously, both these singers have had
tremendous success as pop singers and both have ventured into opera.
while bocelli is not, in my opinion, on the same level of world class
opera singers, while singing opera, he is at least as good as any tenor i
have been onstage with. in other words, the potential for him to be very
good is there though, he is not 'world class'. in his own genre, i think he
is. what is unfortunate is that the special quality he offers as a pop
singer, gets left behind when he sings opera.
michael bolton, on the other hand, retains that quality that is
special to him, when he sings opera. however, there is no indication, in
his singing, that he is earnestly attempting to be a legitimate opera singer.
i don't mean that as a criticism, i simply mean that it is 'michael bolton
sings opera' rather than 'michael bolton, the opera singer'.
regardless of whatever you might think of these two singers and their
forays into the operatic literature or, their pop singing for that matter, it
seems clear we never have to worry about their high notes. in the case of
bocelli and only sometimes in the case of bolton, the timbre of their high
notes more closely resembles that of 'real opera singers' (i didn't know how
else to put that). it seems that this is always the case with bocelli but
with bolton, this appears to be a new choice. compared to his 'big hair
metal' days, the timbre of his high notes on his aria disc is, in some places
(especially 'vesti la giubba') bordering on legitimately operatic.
what i particularly like about bocelli's pop music is that he combines
the high notes of a more operatically oriented singer while retaining the
conversational tone for the rest of his voice, that is key to good pop
singing. renato russo, a kind of brazilian baritonal bocelli, does not have
the same poperatic high range as bocelli and for that, i find him
dissappointing.
(for the above, assume that i'm refering to opera through recordings
and not on the stage.)
mike
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