# Opera is just the best



## Diminuendo (May 5, 2015)

I like to listen other kinds of music also. But I think that opera allows singer to communicate with more feeling than in other types of music. Maybe that is because in opera you can do things that in other places sound exaggerated. Yesterday I was listening old Tom Jones recordings from spotify and I really liked it. I really love singers like Sinatra, Nat King Cole and so on. But after listening to Tom Jones I switched to Domingo and then Di Stefano. And suddenly everything was in a different level. Other musical forms are very good too, but somehow they pale when compared to opera.

I mean with opera you get the great music that classical music is and then you get that fantastic singing too. I mean how do you better that?

And now I might listen to some Dean Martin...


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Ah, you youngsters and your Dean Martin!  My son is going through that phase now as well. My favourite was always _Santa Lucia_:






What a stunning looking man, too.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Most other stuff sounds to be on a higher level when compared to Tom Jones. You may as well compare Englebert Humperdinck to Nicolai Gedda.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Ouch, Starthrower! :lol: Tom Jones had a beautiful voice, tremendous stage presence, an appealingly virile style which still allowed him to be sensitive (but never sentimental) when required, and all the sex appeal one could ever wish for- at least, he did during his 1960s and 70s prime, before he became the botoxed orange weirdo he is today. It's telling that Elvis Presley, who was, at his best, the most spiritually intense and the most vocally and physically beautiful non classical singer I've ever known, sought out Tom Jones and befriended him, an honour he doesn't seem to have extended to any of his other younger rivals. There is one respect in which you are probably right: I always feel that Tom Jones squandered his talent on unworthy material. I don't just mean that he chose popular music rather than opera (and who knows whether any pop singer of the microphone era would have had the required power to sing opera, leaving aside questions of temperament and musicianship) but that he sang such barrel scrapings as 'What's new, Pussycat?' It's as if, in his choice of songs, he didn't merely pander to the most debased popular taste, but actually sought to debase it further. Perhaps the fault was not his, but that of his management or record label. Going back to an earlier generation of pop singer, I've always felt much the same about Al Jolson: another tremendous voice, and another larger than life charismatic performer and peddler of outrageously, gratuitously kitsch songs. On a purely vocal level Jolson should have had the power for opera, judging from his acoustic recordings, which offer better evidence of the power of the voice than electrical recordings can. (Whether he could have reined in a certain innate vulgarity sufficiently to succeed in 'serious' music is another matter, but then, coming of age in the verismo era, he may not have have needed to.) Indeed, had his family remained longer in Europe (and managed to survive pogroms etc) the young Lithuanian baritone might have faced a choice between the synagogue and the opera house rather than between the synagogue and vaudeville, which seem to have been the main choices available to him in the US. Fans of the cantorial tradition and its operatic alumni might then speak of Jolson in the same reverential tones as of Sirota or Jadlowker- who knows?

Back to Tom Jones- I like his record of the song Delilah, which is almost like a mini opera with its drama and suspense.  (Though Roy Orbison is my go-to guy for easy listening songs with an almost 'operatic' intensity.) Also, embarrassing as it is to admit, I _adore_ The Green Green Grass of Home! Like all the best country songs, it has the elegiac quality of an Irish folk song, and the young Tom performs it perfectly, without overdoing the sentimentality. It's a voice that really makes you sit up and listen, and both opera and pop (especially pop!) could do with that now.

As far as the OP is concerned, I quite agree. Art music, including opera, has the ability to be vastly more satisfying aesthetically and emotionally than pop, which is mostly a kind of training wheels for the inexperienced listener. I still wouldn't want to be without Elvis, Bing, et al, though I probably wouldn't have admitted to Dean Martin or Tom Jones if Diminuendo hadn't bravely done so first.  Once you've discovered the good stuff, it becomes harder to appreciate pop without self-consciously 'slumming it', and one goes from seeing the greatest pop singers as demigods to regretfully seeing them as noble savages in musical terms, artists who could have existed on a higher artistic plane and reached greater heights of expression had they received the proper training early on. Then again, who knows- perhaps some people with fine voices are temperamentally better suited to popular music, and maybe that's the way they should stay.


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## anmhe (Feb 10, 2015)

Tom Jones still has a great voice, and his material is amazing these days. He's definitely aged well, and his stage presence was stil at 100% when I saw him open for Morrissey last year.

I'll give you that he had a string of bad records from the 70's-80's. I have a lot of them and they are awful.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

anmhe said:


> Tom Jones still has a great voice, and his material is amazing these days. He's definitely aged well, and his stage presence was stil at 100% when I saw him open for Morrissey last year.
> 
> I'll give you that he had a string of bad records from the 70's-80's. I have a lot of them and they are awful.


He still sings? I had no idea. I lost interest some time ago. I think the last contemporary Tom Jones record I heard was called Sex Bomb. *shudder* I don't know what he's done to his face though. I think he shares David Gest's plastic surgeon.  Much better if he had just become a regular old codger with a few wrinkles.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

anmhe said:


> Tom Jones still has a great voice, and his material is amazing these days. He's definitely aged well, and his stage presence was stil at 100% when I saw him open for Morrissey last year.
> 
> I'll give you that he had a string of bad records from the 70's-80's. I have a lot of them and they are awful.


I just remember the cheese he got famous for in the 60s. But hey, he made a lot of bread. I know he has a good sense of humour too. How could he not, considering the fluff he's recorded?


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

starthrower said:


> I just remember the cheese he got famous for in the 60s. But hey, he made a lot of bread. I know he has a good sense of humour too. How could he not, considering the fluff he's recorded?


He didn't really have to sing anything at all, he had me with the hairy chest and the medallion. OK, now somebody say something about opera to get us back on topic!


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

> Opera is just the best


Of course it is. And Wagner opera is the best of the best.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

starthrower said:


> You may as well compare Englebert Humperdinck to Nicolai Gedda.


Well, neither of them should have attempted Arnold or Raoul, though fortunately only one of them did.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Diminuendo said:


> ... Other musical forms are very good too, but somehow they pale when compared to opera.
> 
> I mean with opera you get the great music that classical music is and then you get that fantastic singing too. I mean how do you better that?


The title of your post says it all.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yes it is, when it isn't just the worst.


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## Diminuendo (May 5, 2015)

I have to admit that this thread went into a little different direction than I thought. I just have preference for older artists when popular music since they can actually sing. And I think that older songs are better than most of the stuff we have today. But to get back to opera. Opera is just so diverse artform. There are many different languages and different periods. And that means different type of operas. Then there are different subjects and different voice types. And different types of singers. Then there are neapolitan songs and other types of "folk" music. German lieder and so on. I mean in opera there is something for everyone. Some love basses and some love sopranos. Overall just the amount of material is astounding. And if we add classical music in general... And if you happen also to like jazz, blues, rock, country, pop and more. Life is pretty good


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

A joke.

Patient: Doctor, I can't stop singing 'Green Green Grass of Home'.

Doctor: You have Tom Jones syndrome!

Patient: Is that common?

Doctor: It's not unusual.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

It's my favorite genre, too.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Diminuendo said:


> I like to listen other kinds of music also. But I think that opera allows singer to communicate with more feeling than in other types of music. Maybe that is because in opera you can do things that in other places sound exaggerated. Yesterday I was listening old Tom Jones recordings from spotify and I really liked it. I really love singers like Sinatra, Nat King Cole and so on. But after listening to Tom Jones I switched to Domingo and then Di Stefano. And suddenly everything was in a different level. Other musical forms are very good too, but somehow they pale when compared to opera.
> 
> I mean with opera you get the great music that classical music is and then you get that fantastic singing too. I mean how do you better that?
> 
> )


Mine also, I do hope you have people you can share your enthusiasm with (In real life that is)


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