The Sixth CD of Christmas

When was the last time you bought a CD for one song only? In this day and age of digital downloads, it's not something you really have to do anymore. Maybe I should be asking a different question: When was the last time you bought an album on a factory-sealed CD from a store to which you had to drive? Anyway, I bought The Voice of Christmas almost ten years ago on Amazon for one song. My wife was looking for a Luciano Pavarotti version of "Gesù bambino" and this 2CD set, which was released the same year as the single-disc Three Tenors at Chrismtas (2002), just seemed like the best value. She wanted the song for a holiday performance that she had to choreograph back when she used to teach ballet.

Turns out all the other songs are keepers. At first I couldn't dig the Dame Joan Sutherland solo pieces, but now even the squawking traditional French song "Il est né le divin enfant" brings a smile to my face. To this day, I've never seen the CD sold in stores, nor any of the other CDs in The Voice of... series (America; France; Italy; Mozart; Puccini; Verdi; etc.). You could easily buy one of the many Three Tenors' Christmas CDs anywhere, but if you're looking for an opera Christmas collection with variety, this one's got "old" (Choir of King's College, Cambridge - established in 1441) and "young" (Vienna Boys' Choir - established in 1498), both male (The Three Tenors' José Carreras) and female (the Met's Leontyne Price), religious (Messiah excerpts by the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the London Symphony Chorus) and secular ("White Christmas" by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa).

2009 has been good for opera: Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream (best-selling album of the year), Andrea Bocelli's My Christmas (best-selling holiday album of the season) and Josh Groban's 2007 Noël (now quintuple platinum). Lately the fine line between musicals and opera has become more blurred with these popular artists recording selections from both side by side on the same albums. On my iPod, I label anything orchestral with singing as "Opera" (including Charlotte Church and Sarah Brightman) and anything orchestral but instrumental as "Classical" (no matter if it was written in 1409 or 2009). If an orchestral song with singing is recognizable from Broadway or a movie, I'll label it "Standards" instead of "Soundtrack" even though I know it would be easier to use "Vocal" for both musicals and opera. Before I got the The Voice of Christmas, I might have considered The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Messiah (1959) as my favorite holiday opera album. Now it's not even my favorite "Motab" album (that would be The Joy of Christmas with Leonard Bernstein).