Aretha Sings Opera

Smile for a Saturday

Well folks, it’s been awhile since we had a Smile for a Saturday feature here on Steady. To those of you new to the community, prior to a summer hiatus when we focused on the news, we regularly mixed up this newsletter’s offerings with what we hoped was a reason to remember the beautiful, the emotional, and the connecting aspects of life — and yes, hopefully to smile. 

We thought we would bring it back with a modification of sorts. Rather than post every Saturday, we wanted more freedom to share when the spirit moved us. So going forward, we are going to call these “a reason to smile.” 

Regardless of what we call it, we have what we think is a special one on tap today. Let us set the scene. It was the Grammy Awards in 1998, and the world-famous opera star Luciano Pavarotti was booked to sing the Puccini aria “Nessun dorma.” But then the show’s producer,  Ken Ehrlich, got a call that is the stuff of nightmares for anyone who has ever worked in live television, let alone someone responsible for a show being viewed by millions around the world.  

Here is Ehrlich reminiscing to Billboard magazine:

The show was on the air at 8 o’clock, and then at about 8:10, my assistant came to me under the stage with this little torn-off piece of paper with a phone number and said, “You’ve got to call this number, it’s Pavarotti’s home.” 

It surprised me because we were already on the air. He wasn’t supposed to perform until about two hours into the show, but he should’ve been there. So I called him, and he said, “I cannot sing for you tonight, my voice is bad. I will sing for you next year.”

I thought, “That’s all well and good, but what am I going to do this year?” I’ve got a four-and-a-half minute hole to fill. I’ve got a 50-piece orchestra and a 30-piece male chorus, and the likelihood is I’m never going to get it on the air...

I had not gone to the MusiCares Person of the Year show that honored Pavarotti two nights before, but I remembered that Aretha (Franklin) had sung “Nessun dorma” for Pavarotti there. She was at the Grammys that night...

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever left my post underneath the stage, but we had to do something. So I literally ran up two flights of stairs in Radio City Music Hall to her dressing room. The adrenaline was flowing. It was a small room — it wasn’t miniscule, but she wasn’t the star of the show, so it wasn’t a star’s dressing room...

I don’t have a lot of fear when it comes to these kinds of things, but I was desperate, and desperation breeds boldness ... so I looked her right in the eye and said, “I have a problem. Pavarotti is not going to sing tonight. How would you like to sing twice?” Without any hesitation, she said to me, “OK, Ken, I can do that.”

She had never seen the staging for this performance, which was probably as big a group of musicians as I had ever put on a Grammys stage for one number. So when we walked to the side of the stage and she saw the orchestra and these 30 guys, she gripped my hand and said, “This is gonna be fun.”

And then she went out and killed it.”

You can see the shock on the faces of those on stage and in the audience. You can feel Aretha gaining power as she goes along. What a story. What an artist. What a performance. And what a reason to smile. 

And let’s not forget, Luciano was no slouch himself. Here he is singing the same aria. 

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