For his third and final dip into the Brit Awards Jim is asking us to play a song by someone who has won the Brit Award for An Outstanding Contribution to Music, also known as the Lifetime Achievement Award. His post Best of the Best tells all. I looked at the list and it was, as I might have expected, a roll call of the usual suspects. Not that I am in any way denigrating them (well, maybe I’ll make an exception in Cliff Richard’s case) and there are many there that I like and have played: many times for some of them. But nothing really leapt off the screen at me as being something new until I noticed a link to the Classical Brit Awards. Aha, I thought, and the wheels of my brain started grinding into action. There have been a good deal fewer sets of the Classical version, and as a lot of those winners would have been for orchestral music that made it rather difficult to play them for a theme which is based around lyrics. But never fear, there are three winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award who are singers, and rather fortunately for me they have also given concerts and made records together. So, for once in my life, I’m trying to add a little class into one of my posts (it had to happen sooner or later).
In case you hadn’t already worked it out, I’m playing a couple of offerings by Luciano Pavarotti (won in 2013, posthumously), Placido Domingo (2006) and Jose Carreras (2009), known collectively as the Three Tenors. The first *may* (or may not) have been a kind of inspiration for today’s title:
And as this is Song Lyric Sunday, here they are so that you can all join in:
“La donna è mobile is the best-known song from Verdi’s Rigoletto. It’s also a showcase for tenors and one of the catchiest tenor arias in all of opera.
The Duke of Mantua, who sings this piece, is an utterly charming man who has absolute power within his domain, combined with the morals of a feral tomcat. When the play opens, he’s planning to bed Gilda, a beautiful girl he’s seen in church. But meanwhile, he starts an affair with a countess, under her husband’s nose. The father of a girl he seduced enters and curses him; the Duke has him thrown in prison. A few scenes later the Duke has a touching exchange with Gilda, during which he lies to her face. His courtiers kidnap Gilda and take her to the Duke’s palace, where he rapes her. When he enters singing this catchy tune early in Act III, the Duke has come to a disreputable inn to have sex with yet another beautiful girl.
For the audience, who knows all this, “La donna e mobile” (“Women change like a feather in the wind”) is dripping with irony.”
Nothing like a good singalong after you have had your wicked way with a young lady, against her will, is there?
The Three Tenors album and DVD from which that performance was taken was a concert they gave in Los Angeles on the eve of the 1994 World Cup Final, which took place in Pasadena: the concert was televised live around the world to an estimated audience of 1.3bn. I watched both, and to be honest the concert was much more fun than the football, which was won by Brazil 3-2 on penalties after the most tedious 0-0 draw (after extra time) with Italy. It probably didn’t help that I couldn’t give a monkeys who won, anyway, but of course that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that England didn’t even qualify for the tournament!
Back to the music. A link between the Three Tenors and football had been established for us in the UK at the previous World Cup, held in Italy in 1990, when the BBC played the Pavarotti part of this as their theme music for the competition:
That was their encore to their 1994 concert, and I think it was majestic. Three wonderful voices filled with emotion, individually and in harmony, making musical magic even when you don’t know what the lyrics mean. More background from the Genius website
“Nessun dorma is an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot.
Puccini began working on the opera in 1920. The next year, he started composing the music. Two years later, in 1924, Puccini had all but finished the opera’s final duet. Puccini disliked the text of the duet and postponed composing it until he was able to correct the text. When he finally chose the words for it, two days later he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Having decided to travel to Belgium for treatment and surgery the last week of November 1924, Puccini died as a result of the surgery on November 29. Therefore, the opera itself was never finished by Puccini.
The first performance was held at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 25 April 1926 and conducted by Arturo Toscanini.”
And they give a decent translation of the lyrics, which partly go like this:
No one sleeps! No one sleeps!
Even you, oh princess
In your cold room
Look at the stars
That tremble with love and with hope
But my mystery is locked inside me
No one will know my name!
No, no! On your mouth
I will say it when the light shines
And my kiss will dissolve
The silence that makes you mine
That’s my two offerings for today’s SLS. Something a little different from my usual fare, but two wonderful pieces of music and some truly exceptional performances. What’s not to like?
See you again on Tuesday for the next episode of Tuesday Tunes/Advent Countdown. Until then, be safe and well 😊
Take It Easy 