Stage Talk with Rick Koster
Where every show has something to say.
Three is the perfect number
On March 20, the Garde welcomes Giovanni Maria Palmia, Ugo Tarquini and Alessandro Fantoni — The Three Italian Tenors. Each is an exquisitely trained and globally renowned performer, and it’s of course perfectly natural they’re singing together on the same stage because, as you know, tenors can only tour in groups of three!
Garde patrons will savor an evening of timeless Italianate classics and some of the most endearing arias in the repertoire — presented in what’s become an incredibly popular format.
The tradition of “three tenors” began in 1990 when Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras sang together on the eve of the FIFA World Cup. A recording of that performance became the largest selling classical music album of all time.
Though the subsequent expansion of the concept has resulted in excellent tours such as The Three Italian Tenors, it’s also fun to know there have been some misfires.
- An elite talent agency had the idea of a “The One-Hundred-and-Twenty-Three Tenors” concert featuring an opera star from each country in the United Nations. Onstage, they would individually and collectively sing every aria in the history of opera — with a boffo arrangement of Styx’s “Come Sail Away” as an encore.
- Then there was the “Three Honky-Tonk Baritones” idea. The program boasted operatic arias and popular Broadway material sung by a trio of baritones from beer-soaked country and western barrooms. Ernest Tubb would perform “Nessun Dorma” in his hog-like delivery; George Jones’s whiskey ’n nicotine tones would offer “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha; and Webb Pierce would go full adenoidal trying to reach all nine High Cs in Donizetti’s “Ah! mes amis.”
Breathe a sigh of relief, then, and eagerly anticipate “The Three Italian Tenors.” It will be everything good and right about the concept — with three of the finest singers in the world.