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Originally Posted by M_is_D
If we have to distort opera just to make new fans, I really don't see the point. And metal groups don't use those things necessarily to please classical music fans. Opera might not be nearly as huge as it used to be, but it's not dying either. Huge opera companies all over the world aren't going bankrupt. There are still new talents being discovered and very successful opera singers exist nowadays.
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I was just having a little fun with the first part of that argument (I play devil's advocate way too much). But the second part, while opera may not be on it's death bed, it's not exactly doing all that much either. I was looking at the schedules for some major opera houses yesterday and they're littered with works that are 100+ years old. That's fine as I want to have the opportunity to see them, but I get the feeling that it was at one point the opposite as far as new vs old operas being performed. It makes it seem like opera is only hanging on because there are people that still want to see those classics but it's not thriving like it should.
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They won't be as good. In a performance of Madame Butterfly I saw (just to give an example of what can, and does happen everywhere) the tenor (whose tone, obviously, was operatic) could barely be heard at the bottom rows of the hall. And guess what, though operatic, his voice really wasn't anything special, on the contrary. The soprano, though, had an amazing, beautiful tone, and she always overpowered the tenor. If that opera used amplification, many of the tenor's flaws would have been masked.
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Would that necessarily be bad? You say he had an operatic tone but couldn't project. If you were at that performance and he projected just as much as the more skilled singer, wouldn't your experience have been that much better?
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Yeah, famous singers do those things once in a while... do you honestly like that? I personally find it very awkward to hear John Denver sung by an operatic voice.
And if you manage to find me popular music singers singing operatic repertoire, I bet it'll sound even worse.
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Yeah, they do tend to sound pretty bad trying to sing opera. Like in this:
YouTube - Pavarotti and friends - Nessun Dorma
I think I was just jumping at the opportunity to post some funny videos.
There are some of Domingo's solo work too... yikes. They're too bad to link to, heh.