The clock is ticking towards midnight once more.
Katherine Jenkins is quietly singing the flower duet from Lakmé, and I’m wondering about making a final coffee.
I remember when Katherine first became famous - back when I was working in London - the year before the children arrived in our lives. I remember the billboards all over the city, and breathless magazine articles whispering about the colossal recording contracts she had signed - the biggest in modern classical music history.
She’s singing “I Believe” now with Andrea Boccelli.
I remember seeing her in an interview back when she first appeared. The interviewer took one look at her and treated her like a Barbie doll - somehow she didn’t react, and answered their questions with grace, humility and patience. I remember watching the self-important interviewer squirm, realising he’s made an enormous mistake.
I also remember the first time I saw Andrea Boccelli. He sang “Canto Della Terra” at an open air concert on TV - a fund raiser for a children’s charity perhaps? I’m pretty sure I still lived with my parents. I remember standing in their back room, watching the performance on TV one weekend afternoon. The entire stadium crowd fell silent - you could have heard a pin drop. I can still remember hairs standing up while listening and watching.
I bought one of his albums not long after, and took it to work with me. We played it in the office, but had to stop it in the end because we weren’t getting any work down - we realised we had all stopped to listen.
Isn’t it interesting how music transports us back to moments in time - not only to where we were, and who we were with, but how we felt at the time.