Friday, September 14, 2007
a breath of inspiration.
this is a clip i chanced upon in charm's friend's blog... thought that it was absolutely fantastic, so i decided to look for it and post it here for your aural pleasure :) had to screen a few clips, but i'm not complaining, cos it is really worth listening to over and over again :P
paul potts (at first, i thought i heard the anglicised version of pol pot - you know, the cambodian dictator?) is this guy who recently won a competition called, "britain's got talent". he's got unflattering looks, a paunch, crooked teeth and every bit as normal as anyone of us (a little like william hung). but he chose to flaunt the one most remarkable thing he had: his voice.
so you must be thinking to yourself (if you haven't watched the clip): what songs does he sing? the most surprising thing (for a talent show for popular consumption) is, he didn't sing any songs from the common genres.
he chose to perform opera.
opera?! for the masses?! i was pretty skeptical until i heard his rendition of "nessun dorma" (the late pavarotti's signature song). i admit that i'm rather unfamiliar with opera and stuff, but the moment he started singing...! i was blown away by his voice - the power, the clarity, the emotion! you could feel his conviction, as though he were the prince immortalised in the song! you could feel his voice pumping your blood through the veins and squeezing the air out of your lungs! unlike charm's friend, i didn't cry (reason being either 1. being a guy, it takes a little more to reduce me to tears, or 2. i couldn't fully appreciate the subtleties of opera. or both :/); i just felt greatly moved. lol.
a guy-next-door with an extraordinary talent. rags to riches? perhaps. but his tale is not a typical poor-kid-makes-it-in-life story. to him, winning wasn't about the money. it was about mending his battered pride and fighting for the opportunity to lead the life he had always wanted and to pursue his dream of being a professional opera singer.
here's the parting statement, which consists of the last part of the aria:
- "Vanish, O night! Set, stars! Set, stars!
- At dawn, I will win!
- I will win! I will win!"
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