Il Divo & Lea perform Broadway hits

This is A Musical Affair, the latest album by the famous Il Divo, has the pop opera group singing duets with famous stars from Broadway and London’s West End. Chief among them is the incomparable Barbra Streisand, who herself began her career on the Broadway stage in Funny Girl. She joins Il Divo in a live-recorded duet of The Music Of The Night from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. If I am not mistaken, this number was part of Streisand’s tour in 2012 where Il Divo was one of the guest performers.

The other duets included in the album are: Memory from Cats featuring former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger; Can You Feel The Love Tonight from Disney’s Lion King feat. Heather Headley, who played Nala in the stage musical version; All I Ask Of You also from Phantom with Broadway’s original Glinda in Wicked, Kristin Chenoweth; and Love Changes Everything from Aspects of Love with the original star of the London musical Michael Ball.

The men of Il Divo have now taken A Musical Affair on tour and they have invited a star of Broadway and the West End to join them. Take note, it is only a star as in one guest and she is very special. Currently on a world tour with Il Divo is no other but our very own Lea Salonga. An Olivier award winner in London and a Tony winner in Broadway, Il Divo could not have chosen a better artist to share stages with for a show about songs from musicals. 

This is also a great opportunity for Lea to be seen and of course, heard worldwide in the pop-opera milieu that Il Divo originated. Lea is always the excellent performer but while being in elegant venues like the Carlyle in New York is a nice feather in her cap, her maturing artistry deserves to be appreciated by more audiences in other places. This tour gives her that opportunity and I was glad to find out that the reviews about her have all been rapturous.

I do not know if the Manila show will have the same song line-up. I hope it will because this repertoire is simply fantastic. Il Divo will do I Will Always Love You, Somewhere, The Winner Takes It All, The Impossible Dream, My Way and others.  For their duets with Lea, there will be Can You Feel The Love Tonight, Memory, Music Of The Night and Time To Say Goodbye. And for Lea’s solo turns, I am sure she will wow everybody with Back To Before, Defying Gravity and a medley of I Dreamed A Dream and On My Own.

The tour kicked off in the US late in February and has continued on to Asia where they have visited Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. Their next stop after this will be the Newport Performing Arts Theater of Resorts World Manila tonight. This will be followed by more performances in Jakarta, Hong Kong until the tour ends in Phoenix, Arizona in June.

Il Divo is the first group that successfully bridged classical singing with pop music and is made up of members from various countries. These are Urs Buhler, a tenor from Switzerland; Carlos Marin, a baritone from Spain; pop vocalist Sebastien Izambard of France; and David Miller, the tenor from the US. It was TV and music mogul Simon Cowell who put together Il Divo exactly 10 years ago. And I am happy to note that there has been no change in membership since. These guys, who I must add have become pop heartthrobs in their own right, still seem happy to be performing together.

Meanwhile, back now to that great Broadway diva Barbra Streisand, who becomes more and more amazing with the passage of time. Just got her new album, Back To Brooklyn and I can’t get enough of it. This is a live recording that she did to inaugurate the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn in October, 2012. Streisand was born and raised in Brooklyn, and the show marked a triumphant return to her hometown after 33 years. And from the first line of As If We Never Said Goodbye onwards, it was goosebumps all over.

Streisand told stories and shared memories, like how the last time she sang in Brooklyn was on somebody’s stoop or how she stopped doing concerts for 27 years because she forgot the lyrics to one song and was afraid it would happen again. She remembered friends like the late composer Marvin Hamlish. She proudly showed off her son Jason Gould, who it turned out is an excellent vocalist. Their duet of How Deep Is The Ocean is one of the highlights of the album.

Of course, she sang. We have heard all of the songs before but as always, Streisand’s singing, paired with the happy homecoming atmosphere, made them sound new again: Didn’t We, The Way We Were, Looking Through The Eyes of Love, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered and People. She is the absolute stylist in her duets with trumpet wiz Chris Botti, Evergreen, My Funny Valentine and the all-conquering queen through Here’s To Life, Make Our Garden Grow and the very sentimental Some Other Time. 

I do not know much about Brooklyn but Streisand sure makes it a nice place to come home to.