Post
by jon » Wed Jan 20, 2010 12:00 pm
I am sorry to pour cold water on this but I thought this programme was terrible. The tone was frivolous and no-one seemed to be taking it seriously (what on earth was Meatloaf doing jumping up and down and shouting for all the time?). I would like to have seen more of the rehearsal sessions and an in-depth presentation of the techniques involved, with the differences between opera singing and popular singing explained, but this would be asking too much as the programme was clearly aimed at the lowest common denominator and modelled on the "vote a celebrity off" format so beloved of today's TV producers.
I thought most of the singers were dire, with the exception of that woman from Shakespeare's Sister (whose name I now forget) and Bernie Nolan, who was probably the best of the lot. While Rolando Villazon is a bona fide opera singer it's stretching it a bit to describe Katherine Jenkins as one of the leading opera singers around (she is a crossover singer and nothing more), as indeed is Camilla Kerslake. I didn't think Camilla sang all that well but she was better than the contestants.
Justice was done in the vote when Alex James was sent home (his performance was simply ludicrous) but I would have placed Jimmy Osmond in the final two and not that girl from The Saturdays, who I thought sang better than him ("O Sole Mio" is not an operatic aria, by the way).
All in all, this was truly car crash television and I certainly won't be watching it again.