I find it fascinating that this particular aesthetic has enough appeal to reach young girls.

I can observe, with curiosity, that this kind of deep-throated singing, and precocious showmanship, appears to have a certain appeal to the prepubescent set I don’t know where it comes from, but I think Jackie Evancho is more a symptom than a cause I believe there are a number of cases of little girls these days who work to make sounds well beyond their years. I won’t lecture the child on how she is sure to ruin her voice if she sings in this particular way, because honestly, if she does care enough about singing eventually to pursue voice lessons, she will figure out what she needs to do, and if she doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter. I certainly can’t speculate on the involvement of her parents, though attributing malign motivation to putative stage parents is a common trope when these kinds of prodigy appear. How can I criticize this performance? I can’t criticize a little girl whose imagination was captivated enough by something about this music, or this song, that she put the energy into learning it. Today’s sensation, as the above video attests, is a 9-year-old girl named Amira Willighagen, who on the show Holland’s Got Talent a few days ago sang “O mio babbino caro” with all of the heart and soul a nine-year-old can muster and then some. (Evancho, incidentally, also burst onto the scene with a performance of “O mio babbino caro” on “America’s Got Talent.” ) All of this stirs up such a tangle of comment – and comment is, today, a universal measure of success – that some people seem to go out of their way to invoke flashpoint names, like Jackie Evancho, whenever a chance presents itself.

We “purists” can get quite passionate about this, and many people come away from such diatribes with the idea that we are nasty people who enjoy being mean to little girls – except for those who gleefully pile on and take our arguments even farther, claiming that such performances represent the decline of art, taste, and even civilization. It happens every so often that one of these singers, singing one of these arias, strikes a chord in the popular imagination and goes viral and becomes beloved of all but a handful of people like me who take on the role of sour-faced purists as we try to explain that the singer in question is doing it all wrong and the aria is capable of communicating so much more when it is sung with real vocal technique and an actual understanding of the words. Dissociated from all vestiges of their original meaning or style, these arias have become a meme, a vehicle for a certain kind of popular crossover pseudo-operatic sound. People who would go to some lengths to avoid attending a performance of Puccini’s “Turandot” or “Gianni Schicchi” fall all over themselves at the arias “Nessun dorma” (now an obligatory vehicle for all male singers, and some female ones ) and “O mio babbino caro” (which fulfills the same role for young sopranos ) – when those arias are encountered on the variety stages of shows about the talent pool of various countries. This story first appeared on the popular imagination, opera arias have become a vehicle for all that is moving and beautiful – as long as they’re not sung in an opera house. 'America's Got Talent' airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Victory wasn't the only surprise in Tuesday's episode of 'America's Got Talent.' Matt Mauser, whose wife, Christina Mauser, died in the same helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant in January 2020, wowed the judges with his emotional performance of 'Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)' by Phil Collins. The judges rushed to the stage to congratulate her, and Cowell quietly told her, 'You have an amazing voice. We are all going to give you something special.'Īfter he counted down from five, all the judges and Crews slammed the Golden Buzzer as Victory raised her hands to her face in shock, clearly on the verge of tears. Naturally, the crowd booed, but he continued, 'We're going to do something else we've never, ever, ever done on the show before. 'However, we're not going to give you a yes today.'

'Turning up in terms of your career is really important,' Cowell told Victory. Beckoning over Crews, he revealed that he wanted to do something that had never been done on the show since it premiered in June 2006. See Some of the Best Celebrity Halloween Costumes of 2022īefore long, it was clear that Cowell had his own tricks up his sleeve.

9year old opera singer