Amici Forever - The Opera Band

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Music reviews of The Opera Band

Music Review: Sanitized for the General Public
Rating: 1 Stars

The crossover-pop schlock on the album might make nice background music for a party, if I were inclined to subject my friends to such (I'm not). Mostly, it's forgettable and overproduced, making much use of the Whitney Houston production team's trick of fading the instruments up really loud and the singers into the background when the women have to sing at the higher end of their registers (which tend toward the unpleasantly shrill). Cheap, cheesy, and not necessary if you've got singers who can actually make the notes. At many points, the instrumental accompaniment drowns the singers, which may well be a blessing.

As for the classical selections, the singers are completely and woefully out of their league on at least three of the pieces. "Au fond du temple saint," rightly described as the ultimate tenor/baritone duet, is laughable. This is not a duet for children, and that is what this version is. The voices are simply too young to do justice to the music. In trying to make the notes, these boys sing with no discernible feeling, emotion, or much of anything else, and the tenor nearly loses it completely on the second chorus. If you want to hear this done properly, I suggest Jussi Bjoerling and Robert Merrill, who have yet to be outdone--two real, mature voices who sing with so little effort and so much feeling that you don't need to understand French to understand the music.

Equally dreadful is the reworking of "Pisen Russalky o mesicku," or "Russalka's song to the moon." The first verse is taken by the lady with the lighter voice, and her sound is completely wrong for this music. Her voice is far too harsh, strident and "white" for Dvorak, and she sings with all the feeling of someone reading the telephone book. I liked the second lady's darker sound better, but her performance also suffers from lack of emotion and her sense of pitch is less good. Neither performer seems to have any idea about, or feeling for, 19th c. Slavic music, and they both simply plow through the notes without a thought for meaning. And the Czech pronunciation is abysmal. For a real version, try Zinka Milanov.

Then there's "Nessun Dorma." Puccini must be spinning in his grave over this one. It's dreadful, simply dreadful, and embodies everything wrong with this CD. None of these performers has the maturity or vocal depth to pull this off, and the reworking for the "chorus" just lessens the piece. Puccini's aria is a masterpiece for tenor, and half the excitement of its original form lies in seeing how a tenor will handle its challenges. This version takes that away completely, and leaves lots of dreadful-sounding mush in its place. Again, there's no real emotion or feeling, but lots of overwrought wide-vibrato-making which appears to be what passes for emoting these days. My personal favorite is Placido Domingo, but there are any number of recordings featuring far more competent singers than these--making this farce unnecessary in the extreme.

For me, the best of the "classical" seleections was Handel's "Zadok the Priest." Although it sounds like five soloists, each doing his or her own thing rather than a unified whole, at least they sound like they're having fun with it--perhaps because the piece is familiar to them, and speaks to something within them. Their Mozart piece ("Soave sia il vento") is also better-suited to their voices than most of the heavier stuff, as well. Unfortunately, even these selections suffer from overproduction and overengineering.

I said at the beginning that I wanted to like this CD, and I did. I don't like most of what passes for singing (wheezing? gasping? grunting? whining?) in the pop idiom these days, so the thought of singers with legitimate voices singing together is an appealing concept. It's just not carried out very well in this instance.

Want real singers? I've mentioned a few. Also try Sarah Vaughn or Ella Fitzgerald--those ladies say more in a few measures than this whole CD contains. Try Alcione, the Brazilian singer who kicks butt all over the place. Try Sviraj, who sing the heck out of Balkan music, and mean every word. And if you must have crossover, try Placido Domingo's "100 anos de Mariachi"--simply gorgeous.

This CD reminded me of the old TV commercial for "100 Favorite Melodies" or some such drek, in which the announcer assured folks that you could have all the beautiful music without a single "unwanted note" or "unfamiliar phrase." In this instance, if you want your music sanitized for your protection, without a single unprovoked emotion or moving moment, and only want it to sound pleasant and (mostly) inoffensive, this is the CD for you. But don't kid yourself that it's real, and that you now somehow like "opera" because you own it. It isn't, and you don't.

Description of The Opera Band

Classical CDs

• Music > Styles
• Pop