Purists Mock, But 'Popera' Stars Get Tills Ringing

11/09/2004 11:07 AM, Reuters
Paul Majendie

Classical purists mocked when violinist Vanessa Mae emerged from the sea in a wet T-shirt to publicize her album.

But now even Luciano Pavarotti has recorded Italian pop songs and the big labels are constantly looking out for the next singer to bridge the gap between classical and pop.

In an industry battling to keep its head above water, "crossover" is big business.

Traditionalists may bridle at the hyped pop packaging of classical stars like Bond and the Opera Babes, but marketing departments have a sharp eye on sales and Post-War "baby boomers" are now buying big.

Simon Cowell, known on both sides of the Atlantic for his vitriolic putdowns in the "Pop Idol" TV talent contests, hit the crossover jackpot launching Il Divo, a handsome quartet of opera singers dubbed "The Four Tenors."

Il Divo achieved platinum status in just one week with their debut album, selling 130,000 copies and knocking Robbie Williams off the top of the album chart.

EMI, the company behind Robbie Williams and Coldplay, is launching Keedie, a diminutive 22-year-old who said in a statement: "My ambition is to be number one in the pop charts and the classical charts -- ideally at the same time."

Acclaimed British baritone Sir Thomas Allen said the commercialization of classical music made him feel physically sick, complaining: "We have undoubtedly become a civilization in rapid cultural decline."

Barry McCann, who took Vivaldi into the charts with violinist Nigel Kennedy and now has high hopes for Keedie, sprung to the defense of crossover, and not just for the ringing of the cash registers.

"Although brickbats are thrown over style of dress and arrangements of the music, I have always seen it as just trying to get great melody to as large an audience as possible," the managing director of EMI Classics UK told Reuters.

"Crossover has been growing in excess of 20 percent year on year in Britain. The international outlook is equally healthy," said McCann, hopeful Keedie can mirror the success of another diminutive soprano, Charlotte Church .

"It is the gray pound that is buying," he said.

Ajax Scott, editor-in-chief of Music Week, said: "People have realized there are older music fans that have not been catered to.

"Given access to the right kind of music, they do go out and buy. The supermarkets are a much more important force as customers like to buy Il Divo whilst doing the grocery shopping. Also one of the key ways is to appear on television shows."

"There is a whole new wider audience. Russell Watson and Andrea Bocelli are among the key artists who have paved the way," he said.

Bocelli now ranks as the world's best-selling classical artist, but London opera critic Norman Lebrecht has been acidic in condemnation of the blind Italian.

"He is a smoocher snapped up by desperate classical labels as a marketing gimmick -- it's the blind leading the deaf. He is rarely in tune and never in tempo," he wrote.

Bocelli, often dubbed a "popera" singer himself and mocked by opera buffs for his ballad albums, has criticized the creators of crossover and insists on keeping the two genres apart.

However the Italian, whose pop albums outsell his classical records, is as proud as Pavarotti of bringing in new fans, telling Reuters at the weekend: "The huge majority of people listen to popular music and if you want to reach out to large audiences you do, after all, have to speak their language."