Carreras at an earlier press conference; AP Photo/Frank Augstein
The big classical music news of the day is no news at all — The Three Tenors will never sing again. Perhaps you thought otherwise, but in case you missed something, Pavarotti is dead, and remains so. But the story hit the wires and the Australian newspapers and broadcast organizations and made editors the world over atwitter as if it were a bombshell. Here’s the AP:
The Three Tenors will never re-form with a new singer replacing the late Pavarotti, tenor Jose Carreras says.
The 61-year-old Spanish singer, who is visiting Australia to give concerts at the Sydney Opera House, said in Thursday’s editions of The Australian newspaper that re-forming the immensely popular trio would be disrespectful to Pavarotti, who died of pancreatic cancer in September at age 71.
“For Placido (Domingo) and myself to do something would betray the memory of Luciano; I don’t think that would be ethical,” Carreras told the newspaper.
Gee, I never knew that The Three Tenors was about ethics. I thought it was just a way for those guys to make huge piles of money off the gullible masses while pretending to introduce them to opera out of the goodness of their hearts.
The announcement states the painfully obvious: what Three Tenors can anybody be talking about if one of them is no longer alive, the other one lost much of his voice by now, and the only remaining one who can still sing effectively without amplification is no longer strictly speaking a tenor but actually more like a bona-fide high baritone albeit a very good one?
However, do you really think that Placido Domingo stayed in the Three Tenors business (and i do use this term intentionally) for nearly two decades because of no reason other than the money?
Maybe i am just as gullible as the “masses” and it’s true that i do not know the man intimately but rather on a superficial level only, but to me such shameless greed seems very much out of character for the wonderful Placido that i know and admire after working with him on several occasions and from a few of my other brief encounters with him.
Goodness of the heart has very little to do with it, of course, but to me he seems like an ultimate workaholic who simply can never say no to any opportunity of performing and always jumps at every chance to share his love of singing with as many people as possible.
Saw The Three Tenors in Las Vegas and enjoyed them very
much. I particularly have good memories of the concert now that
Pavarotti is gone.
Did the three of them enjoy their recitals to the point that they
would have done them pro bono? I don’t know, and I also don’t
know if one of their Three Tenor recitals paid them more than, say,
an operatic performance.
Few performers do their thing strictly for money, but did the
3 T’s have in mind educating the masses? Perhaps not.
We can tell with reasonable certainty that the Three Tenors paychecks — at least for each of the two main superstars — were well into seven figures every time starting with their second appearance together, and no regular recital or any operatic performance anywhere ever could pay that much even for them.
卡雷拉斯表示不会重组“三高”
去年帕瓦罗蒂的逝世结束了“三高”时代，但1月18日，61岁的何塞·卡雷拉斯又要来北京办个唱了，这回是在国家大剧院。昨日，卡雷拉斯在国家大剧院与媒体见面。“这里很优雅，音响很好