![]() Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras: “The Three Tenors Christmas” (Sony, 2000): “So this is Christmas, and what have you done?” What have you done, indeed, Three Tenors.Plácido Domingo: “My Christmas” (Sony, 2014): I’m not sure if a 70-something Domingo asking a 27-year-old woman “Won’t you heat up my love tonight?” on one of these tracks is irony or satire.Christina Johnston: “Christmas with Christina Johnston” (Tadlow, 2017): Blink twice if you need help, Christina.Sometimes, it’s clear that a singer isn’t champing at the bit to record a Christmas album, and yet we’re still hearing them take the reins on that one-horse open sleigh. Jessye has no time for anything less than the ecumenically sublime. Jessye Norman: “Christmastide” (Philips, 1986): I’m not sure if she’s having a Christmas party with this album or if we’re all just going to meet up in a field and witness the Second Coming.Roberto Alagna: “Christmas Album” (Deutsche Grammophon, 2000): Big Band Aid energy with “The Love of a Child,” and “White Christmas” sounds like he’s trying to Santa Baby too close to the sun.Marc Hervieux: “Le Premier Noël” (ATMA Classique, 2009).Dagmar Pecková: “Exaltatio” (Supraphon, 2020): On both of these albums, Pecková is done up like the Virgin Mary holding an Anne Geddes model.Dagmar Pecková: “Nativitas” (Supraphon, 2018).Renata Tebaldi: “Christmas Festival” (Decca, 1971): If you ask Tebaldi, this isn’t phoned in.Montserrat Caballé, Montserrat Martí: “Our Christmas Songs” (RCA, 1996): I’m pretty sure this is what’s on that tape in horror flick “The Ring.” I’m pretty sure that Caballé is aware of this.If I missed your favorite, please let me know-ideally no sooner than December 1, 2022.įor those moments when a singer utters the line “our savior is born” and it’s hard to tell whether they’re referring to Jesus or themselves. ![]() That ought to be enough for anyone for one season. All of this was done in the interest of keeping this venture to a tight 85 albums, clocking in at a total of 4,824 minutes. In the spirit of this experiment, however, I kept it to singer-driven recordings. Petersburg Chamber Choir’s “Russian Christmas”). Martin in the Fields recording, or Olga Borodina’s guest spot on the St. There are also plenty of recordings that feature a singer here or there (such as Gerald Finley’s gem of a cameo in this Academy of St. I’ve also ignored albums of sacred songs that happen to include one or two seasonal tunes (see: Vittorio Grigolo, Juan Diego Flórez). Curation is important, as is performance, but the grand unifying principle is simple: Based solely on the album itself, is this a Christmas party I want to go to?Ī few disclaimers: For the most part, I’ve avoided compilations unless they’re the only source of some recordings (such as the case of the Fritz Wunderlich Christmas album). Rather, it’s like being invited to a musician’s house for a holiday party. At its best, a Christmas album isn’t just a haphazard baker’s dozen of carols (though there are plenty of those). This highly scientific ranking attempts to put each singer on even footing with their compatriots. ![]() The problem with this mission, as it turned out, was that classical singers’ holiday albums are a little like Japanese mascots : Just when you think you’ve accounted for all of them, you learn that there’s a stoat wearing an acorn for a hat representing a ski resort in Nagano, and then you realize that every ski resort needs to be examined and how the hell do you compare a one-eyed bird whose head is sandwiched between two hamburger buns with an anthropomorphic hard-boiled egg that sprinkles itself with salt ? That changed a few months ago, when I decided the best thing for my mental health as we entered another pandemic wave would be to assemble every opera singer’s Christmas album and listen to it for the purposes of ranking them. It’s a good thing, too, that Spotify stops tracking my listening data in late October for its annual Wrapped feature, usually well before I start to play certain albums on repeat: the Vince Guaraldi Trio, the Robert Shaw Chorale, Sharon Jones, Sufjan Stevens, Bob Dylan… Yet, despite both a love of Christmas and of opera, I’ve tended to shy away from listening to opera singers’ Christmas albums. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that I love Christmas as much as Kanye loves Kanye. But the wisdom of our memes is in the simile and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the internet’s done for. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, the particulars of Kanye’s love for himself. The register of my joy at this time of the year is secured by the glühwein, the television specials, the tree markets, and the carols. ![]()
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