With An Aria In His Heart

By TERRY TEACHOUT

Three years ago, Michael Bolton had a fortunate epiphany. Sharing a stage with Luciano Pavarotti at an Italian benefit concert, Bolton heard the First Tenor sing Puccini's Nessun dorma. The experience left the pop balladeer "overwhelmed by the emotional depth of this great music." Now Bolton has recorded My Secret Passion: The Arias (Sony Classical), a collection of 10 popular arias and a duet from La Boheme on which he is joined by no less a luminary than soprano Renee Fleming.

Is this some kind of joke? Not at all, according to Bolton. "These great arias, the ultimate means of expression for a tenor, have changed my perception of music, indeed my whole life, profoundly and permanently," he explains in his earnest liner notes. They've certainly changed the course of his career, at least temporarily. In recent months he has been singing Nessun dorma everywhere from The Nanny to Live with Regis & Kathie Lee. The album shot to the top of the Billboard classical chart on its release in January (it was still at No. 2 last week), an unprecedented achievement for a pop star.

Would that Bolton sang as well as he sells, for My Secret Passion is a grotesque example of what can happen when a famous amateur suffering from delusions of adequacy falls into the hands of cynical record executives looking to boost the bottom line by any means necessary. The results sound just like--well, like Michael Bolton singing Italian opera arias in the shower. Too bad Norman Bates wasn't there to cut things short.

It might have been different had Bolton started studying voice 20 years ago, but belting ballads has worn his middle range to a thread. Though he squeezes out the necessary high notes, after a fashion, everything else is bad to the point of black comedy, from the flabby scooping in Donizetti's Una furtiva lagrima to the wimpy crooning in Puccini's Che gelida manina (real Italian tenors are not sensitive men).

No doubt starry-eared optimists will claim that My Secret Passion is reaching people who might otherwise never hear opera, but trying to save the ailing classical-record business by pushing this kind of trifle is like trying to revive a failing economy by printing counterfeit money.

--By Terry Teachout