Seriously, though, can Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins really sing opera?
It's a curious line of inquiry everyone who has heard her asks. Eventually.
And a lot of the times that question gets posited--"Is Kath Jenkins truly capable of singing opera?"--it is the answers that ain't fair.
Classical music snobs are a notoriously hard bunch to please. Yes.
On the Internet, proper, they can be downright cruel.
(OK, so maybe 'catty' is better word to describe something like this...)
As a classical music outlet here on the internet, well, Classicalite.com is here to tell you, once and for all: "Yes, Virginia, there is a corner of it--the Internet, proper, that is--where Katherine Jenkins is, in fact, a real opera singer."
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Here's our proof: Friday night, October 10. 2014. Underneath the Lynn Redgrave Theater in NoHo. 85 Bleecker Street (i.e. one Classicalite's favorite venues for classical music, call it SubCulture).
The singer formerly known for signing the largest classical recording contract in history ($8.8 million for three albums with Warner back in 2003), Katherine Jenkins-Levitas did her best that night, of course, in the more crossover-y rep.
Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah?" I halle-loved it.
"Pie Jesu?" She totally tollis peccata mundi. (Ditto, too, for that ol' Giovanni Capurro/Eduardo di Capua tune, "O sole mio.")
"A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," dedicated to the brand new Jewish filmmaking husband she met last October at the Barclays Center, was less convincing. I could see the love on her face, but I didn't quite hear it.
But then Katherine Jenkins took to "Dreaming of the Days."
It was her words set to Ludovico Einaudi's "I Giorni"--and, ostensibly, the single from her new album, Home Sweet Home.
Opera? Hmm, maybe. Kath's definitely getting closer to shutting down this entirely silly question.
(FYI: We'll see how Ludwig does it, himself, at New York Univesity's Skirball Center on November 14-15.)
Until then, listen, dear Classicalites, for yourselves...
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