Placido Domingo
Classically trained singers who turn to popular songs always face a paradox. The very precision and control that makes a great opera singer hardly serves to create the sense of intimacy on which popular songs depend. Domingo fares better than most—a little better even than his archrival Luciano Pavarotti. His version of Love Came for Me, the love theme from Splash written by two of America's main mainstream pop composers, Lee Holdridge and Will Jennings, has a tender tone. His duet with Maureen McGovern in A Love Until the End of Time is a sumptuous song that shows off McGovern's ability to muster a dignified kind of emotion too. And Domingo's rendition of the Bernstein-Sondheim Maria can stand as definitive until something better comes along. To their credit, Domingo and producer Milt Okun never try to get too funky. They just put that magnificent voice out there in a more casual setting, without sacrificing the power and purity that make it such a lovely thing to hear. (CBS) (CD)
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