I blame Ashlee Simpson. For this and the state of our world.

Luckily news crews aren't around to accompany my daily activities, accompanied by my fake orchestras.

Eeesh. He's dead, sang several lifetime's worth of operas and concerts, and he ain't Madonna. I think it's more interesting that the orchestra was faking it. MORE TYMPANI!

Also fake? That holocaust thing. And Lake Titicaca.

Yum! That was depressing. May I have another?

this makes me kind of sad. egh. suppressing.

I would have paid money to see a "Girl you know it's-- girl you know it's--" moment.

Are you sure the musicians are faking, too? Couldn't they play live on top of his pre-recorded vocals?

@In Other News...: Dude. You were the tuba player ? That explains a lot.

@ILovePuppies: Yes, but I usually wasn't italicized.

Linkee brokee!

there's no way those musicians were faking. those violinists were moving their bows way too quickly and too passionately over those strings....that's what she said.

God's going to be pissed; leave Luciano alone. Nice semicolon use, eh?

It's so obvious. I can't believe I didn't see it before! Oh yeah, I didn't watch. Also, Blakely, you are a man devoted to your job.

@In Other News...: I confess I suck at HTML; add my stupid iPhone to this and I should also be involuntarianily steralised.

Hey! It's Enrico Palazzo!

@Steverino: My guess here is that the prerecorded track was made as a fallback. The original plan was that Pavarotti would sing the aria, but he had been in such poor health that it was questionable whether he would be in decent voice outdoors in cold weather. On the day, Pav likely tried warming up and decided the voice wasn't working well enough to sing live. Even though he canceled quite a lot in the last decade of his career, he probably didn't want his very last performance to be a no-show, thus the pre-recording.

The rhythm in classical vocal music works differently from pop music, especially in the way the accompanying orchestra has to make constant small adjustments in tempo to follow the singer's phrasing. The communication of these rhythmic changes, strangely enough, is mostly through visual, not aural cues. In other words, the body language of the singer tells the conductor when he (the singer) is about to speed up or slow down, and the conductor then signals that rhythm to the orchestra.

With a pre-recording, the singer is no longer in immediate control of the phrasing, so he may not indicate all the various tempo changes physically, and thus the conductor will not know what to communicate to the orchestra.

Short version: an orchestra playing live to a pre-recorded operatic vocal would possibly result in a huge musical mess, and more than possibly add to the stress Pavarotti was already under, hearing the music go one way on the track and another way in the orchestra. So a complete pre-recording would be a safer alternative.

Here's an earlier (entirely live) version of the aria where you can see that Pavarotti and conductor Zubin Mehta are in almost constant visual contact throughout.

+ Watch video

@DoctorTormento: One of the greatest lines in comedy. I wish they would play the Frank Drebin national anthem at major sporting events. ("Buncha bombs in the air.."

@La Cieca: Damn, you jonesing for a Pulitzer with that multimedia response?

Thanks, I bet you're right. Still, if I were hired to pretend to play the violin, I think I'd put it down and make an alternate gesture with my hands.

P.S. I've heard Manheim Steamroller also hires dummy orchestras to "play" along...to MIDI music!

@La Cieca: Bravissima.

@In Other News...: Seconded, and @La Cieca: thank you.

@rosaluxembourgeoise: Oh hello, dear Rosa. I made a funny about cheddar cheese as construction material in hot, arid climates earlier today, and thought of you.

Sad, but that's not the worst of it - they asked him to lip sync to Paul Potts.

@In Other News...: I'm fucking Proustian that way.

PS: you are such a geek, and really, it takes one to know one.I think of you when I hear Springstein, but rest assured, it's not that often. Still, it happens.

@rosaluxembourgeoise: In that case, one of my favorites -

[video.google.com]

...and this one, because it makes me all teary-eyed:

[video.google.com]

@La Cieca: Everything you say here is absolutely correct. But nothing in the video Blakeley's found make me think that there was actually a track playing over that performance.
Did you see it?

Unlike, for example, Heston's death, this one still hurts, a lot, and probably always will.

Saw this story link first on Drudge. Was kinda hoping it wouldn't migrate terribly far. :/

@In Other News...: I'll be damned, you hit it on the head with I'm on Fire. Fucker smoulders. We've moved beyond cheese at this point.

***The bitter cold also made it impossible to sing, his manager said.***

I look at the words: "BITTER COLD"...

Umm why do we not see any of the familiar "mist or fog" or whatever you want to call it coming from his mouth like we do when we are outside in the middle of Winter and it's Cold as Hell!!!

No matter he was a great Man and Singer and he gave everything to his performances so if he has to fake a few it's okay with me...

Milli Vanilli, please take note, you only get to do it a couple of times, "Not ALL the TIME!!!!"..

@rosaluxembourgeoise:
There is no beyond cheese; I shall see thee on the morrow.

@McCheeburger: It was on the front page of the Guardian today. HUGE news.

@SnarkTwain: I am not ashamed to say that that is how I thought the national anthem was really written until age 12.

okay, maybe a little ashamed.

@La Cieca: Very interesting -- thanks! But as a non-musician, I have to ask this silly question . . . How do violin players fake playing? In the video of the mimed performance, their bows are clearly making contact with the strings. They wouldn't have handed out fake bows to the orchestra's string section to make the deception complete, would they?

@La Cieca: Wait, wait, wait -- when you really scrutinize the lady violin player to lip syncing Pav's right, you can occassionally see a very large gap between bow + strings . . .

The dead giveaway is when the entire string section gets up and does the Charleston halfway through.

PS. I met Pav in the 90's after a performance and he was sweet and as over the top as you would expect. There'll never be another like him.

@La Cieca: brilliant

@SuperBien: I'm not a string player, but as I understand it, the player has to apply a certain pressure to the string (at a right angle to the direction of the bowing) in order to make the string sound. If there's no pressure on the string, then at most what is generated is a little scratching noise. Probably some of the players are actually playing, i.e., the strings are vibrating a little. But the microphones on the orchestra are off, so at most any noise they make is going to be drowned by the playback track.

@raincoaster: Yeah, huge news, along with Paris Hilton's size 11 feet and her bunion (which looks Photoshopped, to me.)

Don't be offended when I say other than the beeb, I'm not much of a fan of the UK press apparatus.

@La Cieca: I am a string player, and I'm 99% certain that they are playing. If you look at their bows you can see that they are making full contact, and using normal pressure. I'm guessing that they were either playing along with a pre-recorded vocal track, or that their mics just aren't on.

It's way less work to play than to fake it so that it looks like you're playing, anyway.