Aria Ready For This?

A new recording of popular opera arias sung by a tenor currently resides at the top of the classical charts. There is, of course, absolutely nothing unusual about that. But this time the singer is not one of the Three Tenors or a younger operatic dreamboat like Roberto Alagna. He is not even that tasteless crossover opera-pop singer Andrea Bocelli, public broadcasting’s latest inamorata. He is a popster, pure and simple.

The CD is Michael Bolton’s “My Secret Passion.” The popular star was not trained for opera at the age when his voice might still have been pliable, but he has been well-drilled for the project and tries very hard. He has, moreover, the respectable support of the London Philharmonic, conducted by Steven Mercurio. An important soprano from opera, Renee Fleming, makes a guest appearance. Sony Classical gives its imprimatur.

Yet all the sincerity in the world, all the help from well-placed friends, does not make Bolton an opera singer. So it hardly makes sense to hold him to the standards of vocal production that we expect from those with trained voices. His fans, who snapped up 10,000 copies of this CD last week, clearly don’t.

I find the recording unlistenable for personal reasons. It reminds me all too vividly of an experience in college, when the vocal teacher of a budding heldentenor classmate of mine tried to convince me that I, too, could sing the heroic tenor roles of Wagner. I had always considered myself a bass-baritone, but I began a regimen of singing scales and holding notes in a range far higher than felt comfortable.

After a couple of weeks of this, I developed headaches; I became restless and agitated; I couldn’t concentrate; and my throat was raw. A doctor said to cut it out immediately. And now hearing the tight, effortful, constricted sound that Bolton makes--in place of the open, resonant, focused tones of, say, a Pavarotti--brings back memories of that experience by reminding me of the similar kind of sound that I produced.

The charlatan vocal coach did, however, offer one piece of effective advice. He told my friend that it would take ex-

actly eight years for his voice to reach the proper weight for Wagner. So he suggested spending those eight years obtaining a PhD in nuclear physics, the idea presumably being that if you fail to electrify an opera house in one way, you will have another to fall back upon.

It is ironic, perhaps, that my friend, who had real potential as a tenor, took up physics, while Bolton, who sings as I did, has produced a best-selling aria disc. But Bolton, nonetheless, means little to us as an opera singer. His effect on the art form will likely be nil. For every fan he might turn on to opera, he will probably drive some young hipster all the deeper into the alternatives.

A pop singer--the right pop singer--could actually bring something genuine and novel to opera. Hip operas are being written all the time with vocal parts probably better suited to the pop voice than the traditionally operatic one. Composers such as Michael Nyman, David Lang, Louis Andriessen and John Adams all have a fascination with a modern amplified voice. And there is always the interesting notion of updating standard arias for different kinds of singers and musicians.

But by wanting to be part of an older, unsullied tradition of opera, Bolton’s whole project--from the packaging to the musical style to the singer’s jacket notes--seems exceedingly corny. It mindlessly embraces and co-opts all the overblown romantic posturing that used to be the greatest source for parody about opera. And wasn’t it to rebel against just this sort of mainstream mind-set that rock ‘n’ roll was invented?

Still, by being patently absurd, Bolton does start to become somewhat interesting. He offers us, however inadvertently, opera as performance art.

Inventing a new persona is, in fact, one possible aspect of performance art. You can witness examples of artists doing it throughout “Out of Actions,” the current Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition. It is a major component of feminist art. And a particularly vivid instance of it also occurred last week at the Beyond the Pink festival, produced in conjunction with the MOCA show, when influential feminist performance artist Eleanor Antin presented silent films of one of her alternative “persona,” black ballerina Eleanora Antinova.

Antin uses characters, as do a number of modern artists, as a source of personal liberation, as a demonstration of how the transformation of the body can become canvas or sculpture. And she has pointed out that such things as talent (talented performer though she herself is) are “tyrannical limitations to freedom of choice.”

If so, it’s a tyranny that Bolton has now overcome. So if you happen to tune into the “Tonight Show” tonight, where Bolton is scheduled to be a guest of Jay Leno’s and where he will presumably sing an aria or two, don’t fret. There is always a price to pay for freedom.