For the uninitiated, Michael Bolton, a pop singer whose heartfelt vocal style would seem to imply a possible sympathy for “Vesti la giubba”, took part in one of Pavarotti’s charity events in Modena a few years ago and when the music blew away during a group rendition of “Nessun dorma” – leaving the Maestro strangely silent – stepped in and, some might argue, saved the day. Bolton has now recorded an album of opera arias in his own unique style for his record company, Sony Classical. The disc has not been submitted for review (“for obvious reasons”) so, my pocket nearly £15 lighter, I have been listening to it, as it were uninvited. More distressing than Bolton’s interpretation (or, indeed, the questionable presence of Renee Fleming in duet) is the fact that the recording has sold in quantities sufficient to boost it to the top of the classical chart (and, perhaps surprisingly, the rules of the chart have not been breached – this is apparently a classical record: classical music, bone fide orchestration and so on. Some tightening up of the rules to cover style of interpretation might be in order.) The sad thing is that the tens of thousands of people who will now get to grips with Werther’s aria (one of the truly horrifying tracks on the disc) will never discover what the piece should sound like (or what it is trying to convey). I have no problem with artists crossing over – Montserrat Caballe’s ‘crossing over’ to duet with Freddie Mercury required a journey of such length and courage that few of her fans, I suspect, would have either followed her or known where she’d gone – but there must surely be some apparent sympathy for the style when they alight at their destination.
The biggest sadness of the success of such a disc is that when there are consummate performers within the established tradition – and performers like Pavarotti, Domingo or Carreras who already have a massive following without compromise – the ‘real thing’ is no longer the most widely circulated. I wonder if new opera fans, turned on to the music through this album, won’t find the real thing a bit staid and underplayed. Classical music has never been short of personalities (and tenors always seem to have that devil-may-care quality that automatically gives them a head start – witness the current feting of Alagna and Cura), so it is sad that it takes a pop artist playing fast and loose with the style of these classic (and justifiably popular) arias to bring them to a wider audience. '