On the 11th episode of the fifth season of The Nanny<\/i>, Michael Bolton made an appearance to promote his then-new album, My Secret Passion: The Arias<\/i>, a bewildering collection of opera. Up to that point in 1998, Bolton was known for his bombastic power ballads\u2014his inimitable howl belting out soul-pop shouters like \u201cHow Am I Supposed To Live Without You\u201d and \u201cTime, Love, And Tenderness\u201d as well as his keening rendition of \u201cWhen A Man Loves A Woman.\u201d Critics weren\u2019t kind to his wailing white-man soul, but audiences didn\u2019t care, buying the guy\u2019s albums by the truckloads (his 1991 album, Time, Love, & Tenderness<\/i> sold an astounding 16 million <\/i>copies). <\/p>\n
So, even if self-appointed rock music gatekeepers were content to drag Bolton, he had built an enviable career that occupied an oversized niche. He found a familiar sound and stuck with it. So, for some fans, his opera album was a big surprise. Though My Secret Passion<\/i> implied that he kept this side of him under wraps, he didn\u2019t exactly hide his love of classical music. He appeared on one of Luciano Pavarotti\u2019s Pavarotti & Friends concerts, duetting with the legendary tenor on the Leoncavallo aria, \u201cVesti la giubba\u201d and he joined the rest of the all-star cast for the show\u2019s finale, a rousing rendition of \u201cNessun Dorma.\u201d And in 1997, Bolton took the \u201cpop\u201d slot in the fourth Christmas In Vienna<\/i> show, performing with opera greats Pl\u00e1cido Domingo and Ying Huang.<\/p>\n
These excursions into the world of classical music felt like exercises in high culture, something some pop stars do to show off their range. But Bolton wasn\u2019t content to merely be a guest warbler at a classical concert, he wanted to headline his own show, which leads us to My Secret Passion<\/i>, an LP devoted to work by composers like Puccini, Massenet, and Verdi. It\u2019s a rather dizzying and audacious detour in his discography. It\u2019s a mass of contradictions: it does come off as a rather self-indulgent novelty record of a pop superstar who can do anything at that point in his career; but he\u2019s very<\/i> reverent of the music he\u2019s trying to sing; and the album was recorded in the 1990s when high-priced labels like Sony threw all kinds of cash at their superstar releases, and no expense was spared for My Secret Passion<\/i>: Bolton is backed by the Philharmonia Orchestra of London and soprano great Renee Fleming makes an appearance (stealing <\/i>\u201cO Soave Fanciulla\u201d without an ounce of mercy). It all makes for a lush and sumptuous record but one that raises eyebrows about how it came to be.<\/p>\n
Because Michael Bolton\u2019s very unique singing style has been a source of some mean-spirited swipes by critics, it\u2019s understandable that anyone approaching My Secret Passion<\/i> would do so with some skepticism. And that incredulity wouldn\u2019t be wholly unjustified. As a pop singer, Bolton has his charms. His leather-lunged roar can wring some genuine moments from the otherwise so-so material he usually sang. His gigantic voice, his extravagant emotion, and his unabashed passion work in his favor when tackling opera music. He\u2019s nowhere near the singer that Pavarotti or Domingo are\u2014his soulful holler can sound wheezy and cracked when he wants to convey sobbing desire. <\/p>\n
Also, great opera singers are also great actors\u2014they aren\u2019t merely singing challenging material, but they\u2019re depicting characters. Bolton doesn\u2019t really channel any personalities in his singing outside his own. In each song, his characterization is the same\u2014in that there isn\u2019t any. He\u2019s simply singing the material. Technically, it\u2019s okay\u2014he doesn\u2019t hit any sour notes, and his power and volume are fine. <\/p>\n
All of this means that My Secret Passion<\/i> is kind of a curio. Recorded 25 years ago, it was a seeming blip in his career; he soon returned to pop music despite the relative success of the record. What\u2019s interesting about the response to My Secret Passion<\/i> is that the album was not the huge stinker that Bolton critics anticipated (Bolton is a lightning rod for mean jokes, though to his credit, the guy\u2019s also \u201cin\u201d on the joke). <\/p>\n
Though opera is inherently camp, Bolton\u2019s foray into opera is weirdly devoid of camp; he\u2019s not approaching the work with a sense of humor or irreverence: instead, he\u2019s going all in, being very serious, like a particularly ambitious student. In retrospect, it feels as if Bolton missed a golden opportunity to make a witty, grand, silly opera record, which would be perfectly suited to his overripe showboating and bellowing. If Bolton is ever interested in producing a sequel, a collection of comedy art songs may be just what he needs to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":34706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10826],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-46561","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-michael-bolton","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46561"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}