'Inspirato' by Yanni.
I really like this album, very much to my surprise. For those of you who don't know Yanni, he's a sort of cross fusion New Age / classical muzak artist. When our students say they like 'classical music' they probably mean the sort of insipid slush that I've always assumed was Yanni's stock in trade. he did last year's Chinese Spring Festival show, which must have been after I went to bed, but I imagine was pretty bad.
However on this album he's got the best (or at least the most famous) opera singers in the world to sing new versions of some of his old songs with newly written lyrics, (all in Italian / Spanish etc, which no doubt is an improvement on the saccharine nonsense of those original versions which had lyrics in English).
The album is so good, (I think my favourite Classical Music album of the year so far) I thought, 'maybe I've got Yanni all wrong' so I loaded up his playlist on Xiami, and listened to the first 5 pieces that came up. When I say listened, the third to fifth ones I only listened to the first few seconds. It was horrible, but so I'm just going to have to regard 'Inspirato' as a fantastic new album by Renee Fleming, Ricardo Villazon etc. My best guess is that the only thing co-producer Placido Domingo let Yanni do was choose the typically naff title for the album.
Let me rant a bit more. Maybe these excerpts from the press release for Yanni's 'masterpiece' will help you understand why loving this album hurts so much.
This is a one of a kind album, there has never been another album like this and there will never be another album like this.
Opera singers singing with an orchestra! I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there have been other albums like this.
Another fascinating tale lies behind the wordless song 'Ode A L'Humanite, based on YANNI's version of the 'Flower Duet' from Delibes' opera 'Lakme'. When the South African youngster Pretty Yende heard this on a television advertisement for British Airways, it sparked her love of the sound of the operatic voice, so much so, that it fired her with a desire to become an opera singer herself. Having overcome enormous hurdles, she is now one of the brightest new stars in the opera world, and has appeared in major roles at La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera - and all thanks to inspiration from YANNI.
You know what. I 'm going to give a little (99.99%) of the credit to Delibes.