Paul Potts and a great introduction to opera


Michael Stuart Kelly

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This YouTube video of a selection from the Britain’s got Talent show is what we used to call a musical banana split when I was studying music composition in college. I cannot recommend this flavor highly enough, especially for people who do not like opera.

For regular opera goers, it will not be found to be the best, but who cares? All the stops in popular culture were pulled out and added to one of the most beautiful couple of minutes anywhere in opera. The emotional wallop is nothing short of amazing.

Here is what you get in a short amount of time:

1. More than anything, Puccini in one of his most glorious moments.

2. A very beautiful tenor voice. Potts may not be the best there is, but he is well, well above average.

3. Opera singers are trained to fill opera houses without the use of a microphone, so many of them are very hard to mike. They keep blowing the levels. Potts handled his microphone discipline almost perfectly (except for a short passage of low notes, but that is almost unnoticeable).

4. The orchestra was doctored for TV broadcast and played off of a sampler module. TV sound quality in general is horrible, especially for symphony orchestras. I listened a few times to see if a real orchestra was used or merely the sampler timbres. From I was able to discern, a real orchestra playing the passage was used as a base, levels and frequencies were mixed specifically for compensating the limitations of TV sound, and sampled strings were added to boost the mid frequencies, especially in the violin melody. Notice that there is almost a buzzing shadow-like texture in the background of the higher strings. That is your standard sampled sound, but it works wonderfully on low-quality sound equipment. The timpani definitely was enhanced, but I think this was with equalization, not by adding a sampled instrument to the mix. The whole approach was to bring out the most important elements on a limited technical support and in my opinion, that part was done brilliantly.

5. The mix between the voice and orchestra was also near perfect and properly geared for TV sound.

6. At strategic moments during the music, the audience burst into applause. In an opera house, this would be harshly condemned. On TV, in that pop environment, it pulls at your heartstrings. It is hammy, but it is very good ham. If you let yourself be nudged by this, it really gets to you.

7. Potts is the perfect underdog scaling the heights. He is a cell phone salesman singing opera in a pop music contest and he needs dental work. He is mild-mannered and confesses to having problems with self-confidence. He looks like a putz. But once it becomes evident that he is doing well and not making a fool of himself, who can find it in his heart not to root for him?

8. The judges were shown acting out their own little dramas: Amanda Holden choking up in ecstasy, Piers Morgan initially with a sarcastic look on hearing that opera would be performed, then looking like his socks were knocked off, with both him and Amanda giving a flabbergasted glance around at the audience applauding. Finally there was Simon Cowell going from totally cynical to being enthusiastically won over with a big smile and applause.

9. The camera work played to the heartstrings, also. Close-ups on teary reactions, overhead swooping and soaring twice during climaxes to show a "lone man against fate" feeling of the singer, plus pans of the audience applauding, in addition to following the little dramas of the judges, and, of course, showing enough of the singer to keep the focus on him. The cuts were evenly paced enough to not be disturbing, but each shot had its own emotional theme. It was really, really well done, and the emotional sum was powerful.

10. The performance was sandwiched in between the opening drama of Potts stating his insecure feelings and the judges all voting yes at the end, followed by his exit from the backstage room. Cowell even had good things to say at the end as a wrap-up.

11. The music part was short enough for the current remote control TV audience. As I said above, a banana split, not a full course meal.

People will look at this performance and think that Potts is much better than he probably is (which is already very good to my ear). What they will see is a pop TV production at its finest. Everything jelled and clicked. What a moment! If Potts can keep this team behind him, he will become a superstar in no time.

For those who do not like opera, I know that there is all this extra enticement in addition to the music, but if you were able to feel an ecstatic and exultant joy of human greatness in this video, imagine what you can feel if you leave yourself open to opera, learn it properly and watch it and hear it live. It is an incomparable experience.

One word of caution. Among opera lovers there are some terrible snobs who like to belittle the appreciation of those who do not know much in order to show off. Drop them like a hot potato for something like this Potts video. This is a magnificent moment and it is even OK to cry. The joy is yours to feel, not theirs to spit on.

Michael

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Michael, at the risk of seeming like one of those "terrible snobs who like to belittle the appreciation of those who do not know much in order to show off," I must say that I don't think Potts has a beautiful voice, nor that he is well above average. I understand that the whole gestalt of the circumstances and the audience reaction could well be moving, but the voice itself moved me to turn off the sound. Surely people who do not like opera would be better served by listening to magic operatic moments sung by magical voices.

Barbara

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If you want to hear the union of a glorious voice amd glorious music, go to

and listen to Birgit Nilsson sing Liebestod, from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. This music was my introduction to opera, and why I fell permanently in love with it.

And go to

to hear the incomparable Melchior and Flagstad, Part I and Part 2 of Tristan and Isolde.

Barbara

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I must say that I don't think Potts has a beautiful voice, nor that he is well above average.

Barbara,

Heh.

You haven's heard much average. Try sitting in an orchestra for a decade and a half in Brazil. :)

This guy was perfectly in tune and that's already a blessing in itself. I didn't hear anything ugly at all in his timbre, either, and the evenness over the break (going from high to low notes) was very steady. Potts does not have an exceptional timbre, but his is definitely not bad. I stand by the well over average evaluation.

I tried to convey something else in this review, though, and maybe it did not come off.

People will look at this performance and think that Potts is much better than he probably is (which is already very good to my ear). What they will see is a pop TV production at its finest. Everything jelled and clicked.

This is not an experience for opera lovers. It is an experience for people who don't like classical music, or at least don't normally listen to it. Try to imagine someone whose only musical diet is background music on TV and movies, MTV clips, and whose favorite musical performances come from "The Rocky Horror Show." The Potts clip is a wonderful introduction to opera for them.

Incidentally, the clips you linked to are gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.

Michael

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Someone e-mailed this clip to me two days ago. I was quite impressed, and I'm pretty serious about music in general and about voice in particular. As Michael pointed out, the cinematography is pretty amazing too. The person who sent it to me is not, to my knowledge, into opera, but he was blown away by it and he sent it to an entire distribution list of his friends. I'd say it's an excellent intro to opera.

What is the piece he sang? I gather from Michael's comments that it's Puccini, but from which opera?

Judith

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Here's what I posted on that other place regarding Potts:

"The main thing about the clip of Potts is that it was surprising, because the audience probably wasn't expecting any halfway decent noises out of him - he looked like such a putz! His rendition was OK for an amateur but nothing to write home about.

Here is MY favorite Nessun Dorma, in its entirety, for your listening pleasure: Jerry LoMonaco"

(This was my college roommate's voice teacher, so he sort of got me into opera. He was with the New York City Opera for a while, and quit to go into teaching because of his health -- I think that move was a bit premature on his part, because he still sounded pretty good to me!)

Oh, Judith - Turandot I believe.

Edited by Laure
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I must say that I don't think Potts has a beautiful voice, nor that he is well above average.

Barbara,

Heh.

You haven's heard much average. Try sitting in an orchestra for a decade and a half in Brazil. :)

This guy was perfectly in tune and that's already a blessing in itself. I didn't hear anything ugly at all in his timbre, either, and the evenness over the break (going from high to low notes) was very steady. Potts does not have an exceptional timbre, but his is definitely not bad. I stand by the well over average evaluation.

I tried to convey something else in this review, though, and maybe it did not come off.

People will look at this performance and think that Potts is much better than he probably is (which is already very good to my ear). What they will see is a pop TV production at its finest. Everything jelled and clicked.

I agree that the video itself is powerful. It borrows what I think is one of the most moving means of artistic expression, which is for a creator to show observers within his art reacting emotionally to art. Salieri's reactions to Mozart's work in the film Amadeus are very moving, especially given his very destructive envy for Mozart, as are Betty and Laura's reactions to the Club Silencio performance of the song "Crying" in the film Mulholland Drive. It's a very effective artistic tool.

This is not an experience for opera lovers. It is an experience for people who don't like classical music, or at least don't normally listen to it. Try to imagine someone whose only musical diet is background music on TV and movies, MTV clips, and whose favorite musical performances come from "The Rocky Horror Show." The Potts clip is a wonderful introduction to opera for them.

It appears that Objectivists have generally rated Potts' performance as poor to above average — with pompous Pigero, star of the world-renowned Wellington Operatic Society's production of South Pacific, chiming in with his typical "weasel-piss." Well, actually, SOLOPsists first rated Potts as amazing and refreshing until Pigero talked them out of their joy. (Little Daniel Poindexter Walden, the kid who started the "THIS is what it's all about!!" thread on SOLOP, has been talked into not just recognizing that Potts is not great, but into mimicking Pigero's contempt for Potts and for the audience who applauded him. Walden is quickly learning the SOLOP notion of "total passion for the total height," which, in essence, means that, virtue-wise, a SOLOPsist's choices as a consumer trump a non-SOLOPsist's productivity: that when one is resentful that one is incapable of rising to the level of productive artistry of a Potts, one demonstrates one's SOLOPsist virtue and superiority by being disdainful of others' enjoyment of an imperfect performance.)

Anyway, I keep thinking "What if Potts were an Objectivist? How would he have been received?"

Peter Cresswell is a mediocre to above average architect. His work can be somewhat good, but it's nowhere near being great. He borrows from Frank Lloyd Wright and others without really grasping the artistry of their work — their expressive senses of proportion, color, texture, etc. In his hands, their innovations (which were innovations decades ago) can come across as gimmickry, or even parody (imitation, though sincere, is not necessarily flattering). Yet where is the heroically honest criticism of his work from the likes of pompous Pigero and other Objectivists who buy into the "total passion for the total height" consumer aesthetic? If Potts were an Objectivist, I think SOLOPsists would either be politely remaining silent, congratulating him for a fine effort, or praising him way beyond what his work deserves, just as they do with Cresswell's work.

Pigero is an amateur singer. My guess is that he's not as good as Potts, and that he knows it (if he thought he was good enough to be judged as mediocre, I think he'd be shoving samples of his performances in everyone's faces in the same way that he promotes his mediocre radio work and congratulates himself for it). So, the question is, when people attend Pigero's performances, in the unlikely event that they would applaud him in the way that the Potts video shows the audience applauding Potts, would Pigero scold them for settling for his "weasel-piss" performances?

J

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Btw, in the past, on both SOLOYahoo and SOLOHQ, I've mentioned my views that Cresswell is good but not great, in much kinder and gentler language than what SOLOPsists use when appraising art, and they were aghast at how "rude and insulting" I was. What's good for the goose apparently ain't good for the gander (if said gander is an Objectivist in good standing with the SOLOP crew).

J

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Btw, in the past, on both SOLOYahoo and SOLOHQ, I've mentioned my views that Cresswell is good but not great, in much kinder and gentler language than what SOLOPsists use when appraising art, and they were aghast at how "rude and insulting" I was. \

Oh, how dare you, Jonathan! You're so cruel. :lol: I think "weasel-piss" and "nihilistic masturbation" are pretty rude myself. They can dish it out, but they sho can't take it.

Michael, thanks for the clip. I enjoyed watching this guy perform and could see that he really had a passion for it. Hopefully he will gain more confidence as he goes along. I found his singing very good, but I'm no professional or anything...just a listener.

I do not really listen to opera (I listen to funkra!), but I don't hate it by any means. I actually quite enjoy it (it's very beautiful and soothing...helps me focus). Any more recommendations?

[i think this clip is pretty rad myself: O Fortuna! Yeah...that's about the only opera stuff I know.]

Edited by Kori
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Next Paul Potts installment:

This time the sound was not very good. The orchestra was "anything goes" and they soaked it all in echo/reverb. This is what the technical people do when they don't want to bother with hard work, like what they did before. The lows in the voice were lost, and from what I can tell, this was not the singer's fault. He looks like he did everything right with the mike distance and his voice doesn't drop like that. The problem was behind the sound board. God, I hate sound engineers! (I have a thing about drummers, too.)

The pop presentation still was a good one, especially the underdog coming out statement before singing:

My voice has always been my best friend. If I was having problems with bullies at school, I always had my voice to fall back on. I really don't know why people bullied me. I was always a little bit different, so I think that's the reason, sometimes, that I struggle with self-confidence.

When I'm singing, I don't have that problem. I'm in the place where I should be.

All my life, I've felt insignificant. After that first audition, I realized I am somebody.

I'm Paul Potts.

Pure hambone, but sooooooo inspiring. I ate it up. I'm a sap, so what?

Shoot me.

Michael

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God, I hate sound engineers! (I have a thing about drummers, too.)

Q: What did the drummer get on his IQ test? *

You know, when they announce that Paul Potts will be singing, it kind of sounds like they're saying that Pol Pot will be singing. Yikes.

J

* A: Drool.

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The effect of timeless upon the mundane....

I always like to see the effects upon Joe Public when confronted by great moments in music reasonably delivered (as this was) or reasonable moments in music greatly delivered......

When their jaws hang, when they succumb to the effects of artistry, when they have to acknowledge by their sheer gut reaction that what they don't appreciate or haven't hitherto experienced is (for that moment anyway) far more worthy than what they do or who they are. I like it because as a lover of all music whatever the genre I have seen so much indifference or hostility towards that which people don't think they like but have probably never heard .....

Pigeon-holing of musical types is the death knell of appreciation I feel.

Michael Parkinson is famous over here for his talk shows. Many years ago I watched one where amongst the chatting celebrities on view was a young Itzakh Perlman. The show would always carry a musical number, but this one was something different! They were talking about Stradivari and Perlman demonstrated his instrument to the guests and the audience with some Bach. The effect on everyone was stunning and at the end of the demo initially only the musicians in the band reacted with applause - everyone else was pinned to their seats in shock.

We are an awful land of snobs in the UK and nowhere moreso than in musical tastes. Fortunately the opera barriers are being eroded gradually......and started when the 1990 Football (soccer!) World Cup was in Italy. Nessun Dorma rose to fame over here because of its adoption by the BBC as intro music to their match coverage, highlights programmes etc. More barriers were eroded at the 1992 Olympics when Freddie Mercury teamed up with Montserrat Caballe to sing Barcelona.

I'm not sure Nessun Dorma will do for Paul Potts what it did for Russell Watson for instance but it is one of those great moments in music that stands well forward from the work that it is part of. The other notable similarity is Dawn from Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Anybody got any other examples????

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I noticed improvement in the final performance ("Time to say goodbye") over the first performance ("Nessun Dorma").

I think the guy's got talent and potential, and I think he needs to work on it. Better breathing, certainly, will help. He might need to find himself the right teacher.

I think that getting his teeth fixed will help his self-confidence a lot.

I was never a professional singer, but I did take voice lessons for a while, some years ago.

It will be interesting to see how he develops with more training.

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Pam,

Welcome to OL!

Glad to see you here. I hope you have a good time. (I am sure we will with your sunny presence.)

Michael

Thank you, Michael. I have been lurking a while.

I'm not always sunny, but hopefully will keep my at-times grumpiness to a bare minimum. B)

I have to give Mr. Potts kudos for his bravery... getting up in front of an audience is rather scary, and some of us never get over the stage fright. When singing "Nessun Dorma," to me he looked like he was scared out of his wits, and that had eased off by the time of his final performance.

The one time I did manage to sing at a recital, the stage fright definitely interfered with doing a good job of the singing.

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Pam,

Back in my music days, I calculate that I performed in about 1,000 classical music concerts (between orchestra and chamber music—I had a fairly popular brass quintet). I conducted only about 100 concerts or so. And I produced and performed in somewhere around 1,000 pop music shows with different artists. This does not include recording sessions, jazz bands, weddings, etc., nor pop records that I produced.

Enough about me. (I could go on all day if I let myself.) You never get completely over the stage fright. Not if you care, even after all that.

Michael

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Pam,

Back in my music days, I calculate that I performed in about 1,000 classical music concerts (between orchestra and chamber music—I had a fairly popular brass quintet). I conducted only about 100 concerts or so. And I produced and performed in somewhere around 1,000 pop music shows with different artists. This does not include recording sessions, jazz bands, weddings, etc., nor pop records that I produced.

Enough about me. (I could go on all day if I let myself.) You never get completely over the stage fright. Not if you care, even after all that.

Michael

For me, worse than the stage fright was this: I wanted to perform emotionally charged music. But for the life of me, I could not figure out how to perform that kind of music without getting all emotionally worked-up while performing it, which could negatively affect the vocal quality!

For instance: The Bonnie Raitt song "I Can't Make You Love Me" always brings tears to my eyes and dredges up old pain... I don't understand how I could perform that song without getting such an emotional reaction that I couldn't sing. The crying does things to your vocal apparatus that are incompatible with good singing!!

Over the years, I have gone to see Jane Olivor in concert twice. She may not be the most technically proficient singer out there; however, she has been compared to Edith Piaf in terms of the emotionally passionate quality of her singing. She herself had such bad stage fright that she took something like a 10-year hiatus from performing (but, happily for her fans, she did go back to giving live concerts and making more albums).

Edited by Pam Maltzman
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Pam,

This is very interesting because I haven't thought about this for a long time.

I am not sure what the psychological mechanism is, but I can describe to you what I felt when I performed and what I have induced artists I have produced to try to feel. The results are usually marvelous.

I stepped outside of myself and handed myself over to the piece of music.

The feeling was like a complete delivery of soul—a reassignment of who I am. I was no longer Michael. There was only me and the music, and the music was my master. I no longer felt anything for my own enjoyment. I no longer had the right to my own emotions. I felt for the music, not for Michael, and became one with it.

This is strange for an Objectivist to say, but I erased my ego. I can't say that it was me focusing intently on the music. It was me serving something outside of myself, and serving up my mind, body and soul—handing over every bit of me with no exit strategy. It was an act of total reverence.

This went along with absolute trust in my ability to perform what I had studied and practiced. I would not allow myself to doubt (after the music started—before it started was another matter). Trust is not even a strong enough a word for it. It was blind faith. The idea of making a mistake or doing anything but give everything I had to the music was not within the realm of possibility or even cognition.

At the end, it was always a surprise to hear the applause. In my mind I was somewhere else.

This approach has led to some strange moments in my life. Once, after a concert I conducted (in a Campos do Jordão music festival in Brazil), while walking off stage I was led to a table where I sat down and was interviewed for a TV Cultura program for about half-an-hour, along with the festival directors and a celebrity or two. It was in Portuguese, of course, and I came off fine and elegant. But I simply do not remember a single word of what I said.

On a few occasions, even though the idea of error was not present in my mind during a concert, I did make an error. This was rarely perceived by the public. My inner reaction was so violent that I would not do anything at the moment (I was still serving the music), but after the piece ended, I would storm into my dressing room while the audience was still applauding and spit in the mirror out of pure disgust. And I would stand there staring at myself, not moving while the spittle slowly dripped down my reflection, and I would not let anyone in until I calmed down.

But when the music clicked while I was in that state, the feeling was unforgettable. This was some of the finest living I have ever done. I believe that on my death bed (if I am lucky enough to die in bed), these events will be part of the memories that will flow through my mind.

Michael

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Michael, what you describe is most interesting. I don't believe I have experienced that phenomenon to anywhere near the extent which you describe. I also did not always have the confidence that my voice would always be "there."

There were a couple of times when the feeling of being able to sing well could be described as the most exhilarating feeling I ever had... and I was moved to tears partly by the beauty of the sound.

Pam

Pam,

This is very interesting because I haven't thought about this for a long time.

I am not sure what the psychological mechanism is, but I can describe to you what I felt when I performed and what I have induced artists I have produced to try to feel. The results are usually marvelous.

I stepped outside of myself and handed myself over to the piece of music.

The feeling was like a complete delivery of soul—a reassignment of who I am. I was no longer Michael. There was only me and the music, and the music was my master. I no longer felt anything for my own enjoyment. I no longer had the right to my own emotions. I felt for the music, not for Michael, and became one with it.

This is strange for an Objectivist to say, but I erased my ego. I can't say that it was me focusing intently on the music. It was me serving something outside of myself, and serving up my mind, body and soul—handing over every bit of me with no exit strategy. It was an act of total reverence.

This went along with absolute trust in my ability to perform what I had studied and practiced. I would not allow myself to doubt (after the music started—before it started was another matter). Trust is not even a strong enough a word for it. It was blind faith. The idea of making a mistake or doing anything but give everything I had to the music was not within the realm of possibility or even cognition.

At the end, it was always a surprise to hear the applause. In my mind I was somewhere else.

This approach has led to some strange moments in my life. Once, after a concert I conducted (in a Campos do Jordão music festival in Brazil), while walking off stage I was led to a table where I sat down and was interviewed for a TV Cultura program for about half-an-hour, along with the festival directors and a celebrity or two. It was in Portuguese, of course, and I came off fine and elegant. But I simply do not remember a single word of what I said.

On a few occasions, even though the idea of error was not present in my mind during a concert, I did make an error. This was rarely perceived by the public. My inner reaction was so violent that I would not do anything at the moment (I was still serving the music), but after the piece ended, I would storm into my dressing room while the audience was still applauding and spit in the mirror out of pure disgust. And I would stand there staring at myself, not moving while the spittle slowly dripped down my reflection, and I would not let anyone in until I calmed down.

But when the music clicked while I was in that state, the feeling was unforgettable. This was some of the finest living I have ever done. I believe that on my death bed (if I am lucky enough to die in bed), these events will be part of the memories that will flow through my mind.

Michael

Edited by Pam Maltzman
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Put my mark in the dislike column for Potts.

Here's Pavarotti on a not particularly good day. Can you imagine what he was like, live, in his prime?

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