It is only very rarely that a CD comes along that is as truly abominable as “Aria”. This is a disc whose every musical moment has obviously been thought out and considered, a recording on which every detail and nuance has been captured, a high-quality project that, according to one American critic, is capable of “saving classical music”.
“Aria” is the brainchild of Paul Schwartz and Mario Grigorov. Their idea was simple: they took eight well-known operatic arias, removed the orchestral accompaniment, and re-attached the vocal line to some very well-produced but resolutely commercial ‘ambient’ backings. All this is done with the utmost skill. Rebecca Luker, while not the world’s greatest operatic talent, provides a sensitive interpretation of (what’s left of) the scores. Schwartz, previously assistant conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, knows his way round a state-of-the-art recording studio, conjuring up gentle and mature tapestries of sound. They could easily have created an intelligent and credible ‘mood music’ album.
Instead, all these talents are poured into flooding their victims with grating, degrading, lowest common demoninator gestures. Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti, Purcell, Bizet and Mozart suffer vacuous saxophone solos, clumsily syncopated ‘groovy’ bass-lines, flimsily anaemic ‘funk’ synthesizer lines, Celine Dion-style fake emotion and traumatically crass ‘soothing’ harmonies and padding; all the elements that market research has indicated will rake in the cash. It will, no doubt, sell thousands and top the classical music chart. No music lover in their right mind would countenance listening to it. '